George Washington: Foundation of Presidential Leadership and Character

GEORGE WASHINGTON: Foundation of Presidential Leadership and Character

Ethan Fishman William D. Pederson Mark J. Rozell Editors PRAEGER

GEORGE WASHINGTON Foundation of Presidential Leadership and Character Edited by Ethan Fishman, William D. Pederson, and Mark J. Rozell

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data George Washington—foundation of presidential leadership and character / edited by Ethan Fishman, William D. Pederson, and Mark J. Rozell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–96868–5 (alk. paper) 1. Washington, George, 1732–1799. 2. Washington, George, 1732–1799— Ethics. 3. Presidents—UnitedStates—Biography. 4. Politicalleadership—UnitedStates— Case studies. 5. Character—Case studies. I. Title: George Washington. II. Fishman, Ethan M. III. Pederson, William D., 1946– IV. Rozell, Mark J. E312.17 .G337 2001 973.4—dc21 00–069857 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 䉷 2001 by Ethan Fishman, William D. Pederson, Mark J. Rozell All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–069857 ISBN: 0–275–96868–5 First published in 2001 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright Acknowledgment The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ezra Taft Benson, letter of March 20, 1958, Folder: DDE Diary: March 1958, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, Box 31, Eisenhower Library.

TO ALICE FISHMAN, MICHAEL DIPIETRO, COREY DIPIETRO, PEGGY KINSEY, AND NORMAN KINSEY

Contents

Part I: 1.

2.

Preface

ix

Evaluating Washington’s Leadership and Character

1

The President as Moral Leader: George Washington in Contemporary Perspective Glenn A. Phelps

3

The Command of Its Own Fortunes: Reconsidering Washington’s Farewell Address Matthew Spalding

19

3.

Washington as Cincinnatus: A Model of Leadership Jason S. Lantzer

4.

George Washington: Can Aristotle Recapture What His Countrymen Have Forgotten? Colleen J. Shogan

53

Duty, Honor, Country: Parallels in the Leadership of George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower Phillip G. Henderson

71

5.

33

viii

Contents

6.

7.

8.

Part II: 9.

10.

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism: A Free Society in an Unfree World William B. Allen

99

Washington’s Leadership: Prudence and the American Presidency Ethan Fishman

125

America’s Presidential Triumvirate: Quantitative Measures of Character William D. Pederson and Frank J. Williams

143

The Origins of Washington’s Leadership and Character

163

The Young Washington: An Interpretive Essay Mostafa Rejai and Kay Phillips

165

The Nature and Development of George Washington’s Statesmanship: 1753–1783 Kent A. Kirwan

183

11.

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell Jim Piecuch

12.

“A Compleat Gentleman”: Congress’s ‘‘Partiallity’’ for George Washington in 1775 William Guthrie Sayen

209

George Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and the Legitimacy of Revolution Ricardo A. Herrera

219

Selected Bibliography

229

Index

233

About the Contributors

239

13.

193

Preface

Late in 1999 a majority of 556 randomly selected seniors attending some of the most elite colleges and universities in the United States were unable to identify George Washington as the commanding general of the American Continental Army who defeated the British at Yorktown. Moreover, attendance figures indicate that almost as many people visited Elvis Presley’s Graceland in 1999 as Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. Apparently, some of the luster has been lost from the bright and shining image of the president who Americans once considered to be the father of their country. How did this happen? What are the primary causes of Washington’s apparent loss of esteem? One explanation is that Washington has routinely been placed on such a high pedestal that contemporary Americans find it extremely difficult to identify with him. Perhaps his image as a superhuman hero no longer resonates because it makes modern leaders appear so inferior by comparison. Another possible explanation is that there have been so many serious abuses of presidential power in the modern era, most notably Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal and the Lewinsky affair, that President Washington may appear to contemporary Americans as simply too good to be true. Given the intense public exposure of the flaws of our modern leaders, it may indeed no longer seem conceivable that such a president ever really existed. The purpose of this volume is to return Washington to the mainstream of American consciousness by demystifying him and by thawing out the

x

Preface

frozen portrait of him that scholars too often have painted. In attempting to humanize Washington, however, we have resisted the temptation to place him on the same level as the modern presidents. In the realms of political leadership and moral character, he often displayed talents that are truly remarkable. While the essays that comprise Part I of our collection seek to comprehend Washington’s distinctive talents, the essays in Part II attempt to discover their historical origins. There is no attempt here to analyze Washington’s leadership and character from a single vantage point. Some of our authors find Washington to be worthy of respect whereas other contributors are quite critical of him. The diverse scholarly interpretations contained in this volume reflect a healthy debate about the true legacy of the nation’s first president. Such evenhandedness is required for Washington to regain the esteem he legitimately deserves. His enduring legacy to us remains the rigorous yet realistic standards he established by example for evaluating the performance of specific presidents as well as for defining the office of the presidency itself. We are grateful to the American Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for its triennial presidential conference series. Ten of the thirteen chapters in this volume originally were presented at the George Washington conference September 17–19, 1998. The editors commissioned three additional chapters (Phelps, Allen, and Henderson). We also gratefully acknowledge the major funding for the conference provided by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. We dedicate this book to Peggy and Norman Kinsey for their friendship and continued support for the LSU American Studies conference series. Ethan Fishman would like to express his appreciation to Alice Fishman, Michael DiPietro, and Corey DiPietro for their love and encouragement.

PART I EVALUATING WASHINGTON’S LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER

1 The President as Moral Leader: George Washington in Contemporary Perspective Glenn A. Phelps

Many things which appear of little importance in themselves and at the beginning, may have great and durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government. —Queries on a Line of Conduct, May 10, 1789

As George Washington arrived in New York City to assume the presidential reins of the new constitutional republic, he must have felt the eye of every American upon him. The Constitutional Convention and the recently completed struggle for ratification had described the skeleton of a government, but its sinews were yet to be attached. The parts of the new Constitution that defined the presidency were particularly vague. The cryptic words of Article II, “The executive shall be vested in a President of the United States,” offered little guidance to the first occupant of the office. Ralph Ketcham has noted that “far from everything being settled, virtually nothing was.”1 Mystery and apprehension attended every word and act of the first President. As his query reflects, Washington was quite self-conscious of the role he was about to play and the ramifications his actions would have for future Presidents. Apart from the very real political questions surrounding the presidency, Washington was concerned about appearances. Some of his concern was

4

George Washington

for his own reputation. Much of his adult life had been dedicated to the pursuit of fame. Today we view fame as a by-product of notoriety. Michael Jordan is famous, as are Madonna, Tom Cruise, Bill Gates, and even John Gotti. But in Washington’s time fame meant something very different from mere celebrity. Fame was an accolade reserved for those who had served their fellow countrymen with distinction. Virtue, disinterested self-denying service for the good of the commonweal, was the means by which one laid claim to fame. To call a man “virtuous” was to pay him the greatest tribute to which a citizen could aspire. Not wealth, not piety, not education, not even property could elevate a man’s standing in the community so much as the exhibition of public virtue.2 Fame informed Washington’s conduct as President. The fragile Constitution needed breathing room in order to survive. Establishing public confidence in the new government—demonstrating that popular selfgovernment, and the President specifically, could act virtuously—was a keystone of Washington’s presidential agenda. Mindful of the risks involved (he dreaded the prospect of becoming President in no small part because his hard-earned fame could dissipate with his first misstep in office), Washington believed that his demeanor as President would be his greatest political asset and, in turn, the greatest asset of the new government. Character mattered to Washington and he demonstrated his worthiness many times over as President. But does character as Washington understood it still matter? Or have modern Presidents found that other attributes—policy entrepreneurship, media skills, management talents, organizational ability, among others—are better markers of success in office? HIGH CRIMES, MISDEMEANORS, AND MORAL MISCONDUCT As William Jefferson Clinton’s impeachment moved toward its final endgame of a Senate vote on his removal from office, public attitudes and congressional positions regarding the President’s fate coalesced into four distinct camps. One group believed that the President had grievously violated the laws of the land by lying to a grand jury and by vigorously stonewalling Congress, the special prosecutor, and the courts at every step of the Whitewater-Lewinsky investigations. These bald attempts at obstructing justice were a “smoking gun” that amounted to a “high crime and misdemeanor.” From their viewpoint Clinton’s actions were precisely the sort of abuse of executive power that the Constitution was meant to protect the republic against. Their rhetoric appealed, especially when it became apparent that their position might not carry the day, to the notion of “if not this, then what?”—if a clear violation of the law were not an impeachable offense, then did the clause have any meaning at all? The President should be removed from office not only to punish him for his indiscretions,

The President as Moral Leader

5

but also to demonstrate the triumph of the “rule of law” over political expediency. The most direct challenge to this “rule of law” analysis came from the President’s most fervent supporters. They challenged the notion that Clinton’s conduct amounted to a high crime and misdemeanor at all. His actions were, at worst, technical violations of law that were so trivial as to warrant no more than a few words of censure from Congress. Drumming a popularly elected (and still relatively popular) President out of office for misconduct many Americans thought rather petty, especially by a Congress controlled by the opposition party, would gravely unbalance the Constitution and weaken future Presidents. They viewed impeachment and removal under these circumstances as a far greater danger to the system of checks and balances than anything imagined by the “rule of law” advocates. Furthermore, removal would undermine the legitimacy of future presidential elections. The lesson to be learned from a Clinton-expulsion scenario was that in the future electoral defeat would only spur the losers to exploit every misstep and mishap by the winner in an attempt to obtain by impeachment what they had lost at the ballot box. These critics of impeachment saw the cure as worse than the disease, resulting in an even more rapid increase in public disenchantment with politics. Moreover, they asserted that future Presidents elected in a period of mixed government (President of one party—at least one chamber of Congress held by the other) would become either overly timid or overly belligerent in seeking to maintain their standing as national leader. Another group defending against Clinton’s removal took a different tack. They conceded that what Clinton had done in the Oval Office (particularly in the Oval Office) was reprehensible. It was embarrassing. It was shameful. It diminished Clinton, the man, in ways that surely diminished the accomplishments of Clinton, the President. Yet it ought not to be grounds for his removal under the impeachment clause. His transgressions were committed as a private man, not a wielder of public power. Impeachment, they claimed, was a process intended to protect the people against oppression and to preserve the other branches of government against a diminution of their rightful powers. Clinton had engaged in grossly immoral conduct, but the conduct was personal (indeed, some insisted that the only harmed parties were Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and, perhaps, Paula Jones—all private individuals—but certainly not Congress and other public bodies, who, if anything, were emboldened by their challenges against the President). Nothing he had done had imperiled the republic. In short, private moral conduct was not to be the measure by which Presidents ought to be measured. It should be their public use of power that mattered. Clinton should be ashamed, but he should not be impeached. A fourth line of argument embraced the notion that “character matters.” Even if Clinton’s transgressions were ultimately of a private nature and the

6

George Washington

legal offenses relatively trivial, the President still should be removed from office. At the heart of this claim was a conception of the modern presidency that suggested that public trust and private virtue were inseparable. More than 40 years ago, Richard Neustadt insisted that the power of the presidency was the “power to persuade.” This persuasive power rested largely on the symbolic and informal elements of the presidency, not in the legal and constitutional powers of the office.3 It was the awe and wonder (to cite a stock Ronald Reagan usage) of the presidency that provided its real power. Strip away that respect for the office and the presidency itself becomes imperiled. And a humiliated presidency would be a threat to the international and domestic well-being of the nation. To allow a foolish, immoral, reckless, boorish, and, perhaps worst of all, utterly untrustworthy man to continue in the White House would destroy the presidency, not maintain it. Impeachment for conduct that demeaned the office and brought it into disrepute was not only appropriate but a matter of national security.4 Throughout the debates over Clinton’s removal, advocates of both sides invoked the words and ideas of the founding generation. While most of the references were to Hamilton and Madison, the authors of The Federalist, more than a few references were made to George Washington. In particular, those supporters of impeachment who would have removed the President because of Clinton’s sleazy behavior, high crime or no (let’s call them the “moralists”), drew unfavorable comparisons between Bill Clinton and the moral rectitude of George Washington. We cannot know whether these comparisons were made sincerely. Invoking the American founders in support of one’s partisan position is such stock in trade of American political rhetoric that sorting out those who actually identify with the values of the founders and those who merely use them instrumentally is wellnigh impossible. What we can do is examine George Washington as President and ask the same sorts of questions posed by Clinton’s examiners. One set of inquiries focuses upon the concerns raised by the “moralists.” Is personal integrity important to the success of the President (and the nation’s affairs)? If so, what sort of personal conduct is to be expected from a President? To what extent should his personal, private conduct be a matter for public examination? Does Washington’s conduct meet those expectations? A second set of questions poses the “so what?” problem. Can modern Presidents draw useful lessons from an examination of Washington’s personal conduct? Does George Washington serve as a good “moral compass” for Bill Clinton and his successors? Or is it irrelevant and even wrongheaded to make too much of moral codes and presidential self-images from more than 200 years past?

The President as Moral Leader

7

PRESIDENTIAL MORALITY: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE Life presents us with many moral dilemmas. Some are played out in the quiet solitude of our interior lives. Some have consequences for others. But for most of us the question “what is the right thing to do?” provides us with no little discomfort. Some Christian ethicists have recently proposed a disarmingly simple decision rule—“What would Jesus do?” It presumes that for the faithful there is a moral touchstone for the resolution of these moral dilemmas. Even though Jesus lived in a world utterly unlike our own, WWJD adherents believe that the words and deeds of Jesus, the human person (as distinct from God, the Son), provide eternal principles for measuring contemporary moral conduct. Is there a similar moral touchstone for American civil society? Are there men and women in our history who serve to clarify our civic responsibilities and duties in the way that Jesus might for Christians? Such a pantheon would surely have a most exclusive membership, but the case for George Washington’s inclusion would be an easy one. His virtues were many and have been documented elsewhere.5 But are those virtues easily conferred upon modern-day political figures, especially Presidents? Should Bill Clinton and Presidents of the twenty-first century model their conduct by the simple question “What would George do?” If one began and ended with the simple proposition “Should a President engage in illicit sexual conduct in the White House?” then WWGD would lead us to a clear and uncompromising answer—absolutely not. Washington imposed extraordinarily high moral standards upon his subordinates, especially the officers under his military command in the War of Independence, whom he badgered particularly about their drunkenness and gambling. He reminded them regularly of their roles as exemplars of republican conduct. He was, of course, never completely successful in exacting this conduct from his officers or, later, members of his administration. But there is broad agreement that his own conduct was exemplary. It wasn’t easy. Sexual misconduct of the sort that has befallen many recent American public figures (not only Presidents like Kennedy and Clinton, but congressmen, mayors, governors, and military chiefs as well) was common in Washington’s era. Womanizing, in fact, was probably even more prevalent among the privileged men of Washington’s time than it is today. Such misconduct rarely threatened anyone’s political career because it was not deemed to be a matter of public concern. Thus, if “moralists” were actually successful in recalling us back to the moral practices common to our forefathers’ generation they might well recoil at the outcome. Washington nevertheless consciously and deliberately sought to present a public self whose private rectitude was above reproach. Indeed, his character was all the more exceptional because it ran against the broader tide

8

George Washington

of moral decadence in his own times. He was a man of great passions. No one can read his love letters to Sally Fairfax (both as a young man and as a retired President) without sensing a man swept away by the intoxicating elixir of sexual desire. Nearly everyone who has examined the matter believes that the relationship was never consummated, but at least as much for her restraint as for his. If we accept Jesus’s admonition that “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after, he hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (a moral position that President Carter accepted as a matter of faith), then George Washington was no saint.6 Washington was also sufficiently hot-tempered to erupt into roaring tirades against conspiracies real and imagined and to lead some of his most loyal friends to fear the reckless behavior that often ensued. He drank heavily by today’s standards (an examination of his requisitions as commander-in-chief and as President confirms this) and was quite vain about his appearance and about the degree of respect that he felt due him. He was a man with no shortage of frailties. As President, however, Washington recognized that his character was far more important to the success and regard of the republic than his policies. The strong antimonarchist movement in the United States stood ready to challenge any untoward conduct by the new President. They were especially sensitive to any scent of the sort of decadence that surrounded the kings and princes of Europe. Appearances mattered. In a series of queries sent to a small group of loyal and politically astute friends that asked their advice on matters of public protocol Washington concluded, “The President in all matters of business and etiquette, can have no object but to demean [behave] himself in his public character, in such a manner as to maintain the dignity of Office.”7 Thus Washington carefully crafted his public persona so as to deny his very real passions. He may well have loved Sally Fairfax while President, but we will never know because he recognized that even the whiff of unrequited desire would jeopardize not only the reputation that he had carefully constructed but also the health of the nascent republic that he had dedicated to winning, building, and nurturing for the previous fifteen years. He continued to drink, but such was his self-discipline that in his eight years as President no one, friend or foe, ever observed Washington under the influence. He continued to have fits of ill temper but with one possible exception (his rage in the Senate chamber after they declined to offer him “advice” on a treaty—and some claim that even this outburst was for theatrical effect!), he never revealed anything outside his small circle of advisers but the stolid, even-tempered demeanor of his public persona.8 Private conduct, to the extent that it might diminish or, in George Washington’s case, enhance the standing of the presidency, was a matter for public examination. Washington understood that and modified his own conduct accordingly.

The President as Moral Leader

9

That formidable public persona was well earned. But before we hold up WWGD as the standard by which modern presidents should be measured, we need to more carefully examine the question of integrity in both Clinton’s and Washington’s time. Sex was the focus of President Clinton’s impeachment. As Senator Dale Bumpers explained to his colleagues, We are here today because the President suffered a terrible moral lapse of marital infidelity—not a breach of the public trust, not a crime against society, the two things Hamilton talked about in Federalist Paper No. 65—I recommend it to you before you vote—but it was a breach of his marriage vows. It was a breach of his family trust. It is a sex scandal. H. L. Mencken one time said, “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about money,’ it’s about money.” [Laughter] And when you hear somebody say, “This is not about sex,” it’s about sex.9

But what originally triggered the special prosecutor’s investigation that culminated in that impeachment were not charges of sexual impropriety but rather more mundane claims that the Clintons had enriched themselves in some questionable land dealings (Whitewater) that occurred before Clinton was elected President. The special prosecutor explored several alleged violations of law, but all of them concerned the broad category of “conflict of interest.” Conflict-of-interest statutes seek to limit the ability of public officials to influence public policies in ways that enrich themselves. The impeachment clause of the federal Constitution lists “bribery” as grounds for removal from public office, but bribery is a very specific crime that involves the direct payment of money to an officeholder in exchange for a direct political favor. Bribery was understood to be beyond the pale in Washington’s time just as it is today. What was not beyond the pale in Washington’s time was a wide array of conduct that today would be defined as conflict-of-interest. It is not bribery per se for a public official to purchase land through intermediaries so as to shield one’s involvement in the deal. Washington, however, regularly used “stalking horses” when attempting to purchase land. He feared that his notoriety would cause the sellers to raise their asking price (1) because he was George Washington, and (2) because Washington was thought to be among the wealthiest men in Virginia. In truth, he was wealthy—in land, the currency most highly valued in agrarian Virginia. But he often found himself cash-poor. Always looking to acquire more land (I can find no instance in which Washington ever sold land), he engaged business acquaintances to purchase lands at a “fair” price on his behalf, without revealing his identity to the sellers. It is not bribery per se to distribute government land bounties so as to reserve much of the best land for oneself. Virginia had promised land bounties to members of its militia as compensation for their service on the frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war Washington pestered

10

George Washington

the colonial government to pay him and his soldiers the land bounties they had been promised. He always spoke on behalf of the “loyal soldiers,” but as the commanding officer his personal reward of 15,000 acres was considerably larger than that of any of his troops. Moreover, he assigned the best of these western lands to himself, arguing that he had borne most of the costs of the surveys and had taken up much of his own time in lobbying for and administering the grants.10 It is not bribery per se to accept shares in an entrepreneurial venture and then advocate that the federal government fund it. Washington was an early supporter of a canal that would connect the Potomac to the headlands of the Ohio where he owned about 58,000 acres of land. If a sure and certain means of transportation were established between Ohio and the Atlantic Ocean then the value of those lands would appreciate considerably. Washington would be able to command top dollar in rents as well as attract, in his words, the “right kind” of tenants. In addition, if the Potomac became the principal route from west to east then Alexandria would surely become one of the leading commercial centers in the nation—an outcome that could not but have improved his own economic interests. To his credit Washington donated his shares in the canal company to a fund to educate the children of soldiers killed in the Revolution; moreover, despite Washington’s invitation Congress chose not to subsidize the project and the canal was never completed. It is not bribery per se to refuse a salary but insist on payment of one’s expenses, however inflated, out of the public fisc. A man of virtue expected to perform public service without compensation because to accept a salary made you a “placeman” obligated to serve a political master. Republican political theory of the day considered “placemen” unworthy of respect or trust.11 Thus, as commander-in-chief, Washington served for eight years without payment. This selfless patriotism only increased the public adoration for him. But he did expect to have his expenses paid. The costs of his servants and slaves, his staff, numerous hogsheads of rum and Madeira, fine uniforms, horses, and his “baggage” were itemized meticulously by Washington and he expected payment as a matter of public honor. Congress thought some of these claims exorbitant—certainly not emblematic of a republican general; but they paid his expenses nonetheless. Interestingly, when discussions at the Philadelphia Convention turned to the question of compensation for the President there was a suggestion that he serve without salary. The delegates quickly dispensed with that notion and agreed to a fixed salary. Some observers believe that the experience of dealing with Washington’s “expenses” (and he would certainly be the first President) inclined several former members of Congress away from that option. A salary was a cheaper alternative. Not one of these episodes constituted bribery, but they would (except for the expense account matter) amount to corrupt practices today. At the

The President as Moral Leader

11

same time, Clinton’s alleged improprieties in Whitewater would have aroused few alarms in Washington’s day. Land was plentiful. Acquiring as much of it as you could was viewed as enterprise (private enterprise), not immorality. Advocating public policies that enriched you privately was not seen as unethical. In fact, one of the most important differences between the political cultures of the late 1700s and the late 1900s is that public life and private life in Washington’s time were not clearly distinguishable. His contemporaries saw nothing wrong with pressing for policies that advantaged themselves personally so long as the policies were beneficial to the public. In our time, we have tried to erect a high wall of separation between public performance and private interest—the latter is never supposed to instruct the former. This is why measuring any President’s behavior against the WWGD standard can lead to unintended, even perverse, outcomes. We want to endorse Washington’s commendable self-discipline and moral rectitude, but do we also want to endorse the easy way in which he justified supporting public policies that enhanced his own fortune (as so many of his contemporaries thought quite normal)? DOES THE CHARACTER OF A PRESIDENT MATTER? In the final weeks of the 1992 presidential campaign President George Bush’s advisers informed him of the bad news—his effort to win reelection was floundering. The smooth-running Clinton challenge had identified a theme (“It’s the economy, stupid!”) that appealed to many voters. Bush’s campaign, on the other hand, lacked focus. In those last few weeks Bush chose to argue that character mattered—that Bush’s met the mark and that Clinton’s did not. Bush’s speeches and ads did not identify any specific character flaws in his opponent, but instead offered general allusions to morally questionable (or at least unpresidential) behavior already “on the record”—his infidelity with Gennifer Flowers, his willingness to split legal hairs on moral questions (“I never inhaled”), and his avoidance of military duty during the Vietnam War. In the end Clinton won. Character alone was apparently not the decisive factor in the people’s assessment of who should be their president. But was George Bush right? Is the office and the country better served by having Presidents who exemplify the best qualities of integrity, honesty, morality, and strength of character? Anecdotally, the proposition appears unconvincing. Several men generally counted among the Presidents with the highest degree of integrity (John Adams, James Madison, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter) are also counted among the least successful in the office. Several men whose personal and/or public integrity was questionable (Franklin Roosevelt, Chester Arthur, John Kennedy, Andrew Jackson, perhaps even Bill Clinton) had successful presidencies.12

12

George Washington

But let us accept that George Bush’s observation is correct—that character does matter and ought to be required of all Presidents. The principal difficulty is in defining character. In a partisan political climate, supporters will favorably contrast their own candidate’s upright character with the opportunism and sleaziness of their opponent. Conservatives are inclined to presume bad character among liberals but not among their fellow ideologues; liberals are similarly suspicious of the character of conservatives. Each invokes “See, I told you so” at any misstep by their adversaries while presuming a moral superiority among their own kind. In short, “character” in the political arena is a term with no fixed meaning, free to be defined and applied for partisan advantage. Character is not meaningless, but its meaning is not grounded in any common understanding. It is amorphous much in the way that Justice Potter Stewart tried to come to grips with the notion of “obscenity.” In a 1964 case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Stewart argued that “I shall not attempt further to define [hard-core pornography] . . . But I know it when I see it.” We can see it most clearly post hoc. Only after a President has served for some time can we look back and speculate that President X’s character enhanced or diminished his political success or the prosperity and security of the nation or the status of the presidential office. The more difficult question for citizens is whether we can identify the critical qualities of character prior to the moment when we must decide whether to entrust the sacred office to that candidate. One of the most popular books written by a political scientist in the last quarter century was James David Barber’s The Presidential Character. Written at a time when the Nixon presidency was in crisis and public cynicism toward the office was rising, Barber claimed that character not only mattered but that a careful examination of a person’s public and private life would leave clues as to his likely performance as President (hence the subtitle of the book, Predicting Performance in the White House). Interestingly, Barber saw character as multidimensional and suggested a typology of presidential character that focused more on interpersonal skills, flexibility, optimism, and personal self-regard than on Judeo-Christian notions of morality. Barber believed that if we examined important life events in the right light they would reflect the character of a potential President and the likelihood of his presidency being successful. Barber classified presidential character into four clusters of attitudes and predispositions: active-positive (which he thought the best character “type” for prospective Presidents), passive-positive, passive-negative, and active-negative (which he thought the most dangerous). Barber’s attempt was a noble one. He sought to examine a quality many Americans intuitively believe to be an important component of presidential leadership—character—according to neutral criteria. His approach has been criticized at several levels, not the least of which

The President as Moral Leader

13

is that his categorizations do not perform as promised. For example, Barber classifies George Washington as passive-negative, normally a marker of a less successful President. Yet nearly every student of the presidency places Washington among the “greatest” of Presidents. Barber concedes that Washington’s “dignity, judiciousness, his aloof air of reserve and dedication to duty . . . established the fundamental legitimacy of an American government at a time when this was a matter in considerable question.”13 Nevertheless, Barber’s attempt to define presidential character led him to diminish the importance of “dignity, judiciousness . . . and dedication to duty” in favor of a more activist, style-oriented conception of the “good” President. In fairness to Barber, he consistently praised Washington and accepted the oft-repeated characterization of George Washington as the “indispensable man.” But Barber elsewhere implies that the traits that made Washington uniquely successful as the first President would be ill-suited to modern Presidents. INTEGRITY AS A POLITICAL RESOURCE: A CASE OF TWO TREATIES Can we see the value of presidential character, as defined by Washington rather than Barber, in contemporary political life? Is integrity a fungible political resource that can be brought to bear on the great political questions of the day? The great difficulty for the “character matters” position is that political phenomena are almost never unidimensional. The political arena contains many actors with many motives. Constituencies differ, situations differ, issues differ, media attention varies, public opinion has many layers. Laying causation at the doorstep of any one specific factor is wellnigh impossible. It’s unlikely that we could ever say that an issue was solely determined by the quality of the President’s character. But it does not necessarily follow that character matters not at all. It might still be an important contributing factor in a President’s success or failure. It has long been understood that presidential influence is at its height in matters of foreign affairs. His constitutional powers are greater (he can unilaterally negotiate treaties, recognize foreign governments, deploy American troops), he has greater intelligence resources at his command, Congress is less likely to be interested in the subject, and he stands as a symbol of the American people in foreign affairs (he is, by tradition and law, the only legitimate “voice” of the American people). Not surprisingly, Aaron Wildavsky was able to demonstrate forty years ago that a President’s foreign policy “success rate” is consistently higher than in any field of domestic politics.14 Still, even in foreign policy the President does not always prevail. Those failures occur for many reasons. But are there occasions where presidential success or failure can be accounted for (in part) because of the President’s personal integrity?

14

George Washington

I believe that two treaty ratification struggles, one from 1795 and one from 1999, may shed light on this inquiry. President Washington was convinced that the British were acting in bad faith after the Treaty of Paris. He believed that they had not lived up to the provisions of that peace settlement. Worse, he believed that they were provoking confrontations on the western frontier and seeking to establish economic hegemony over their former colonies. Washington thus sent a delegation to England headed by John Jay to obtain British compliance with the peace treaty and to insist on respect for American sovereignty. Toward the end of 1794 rumors of a new treaty were widespread in Philadelphia. When Washington finally received a copy of Jay’s Treaty he “was not favorable to it.”15 That was putting it mildly. Jay’s Treaty frankly gave away the store. Almost every complaint between the two nations was resolved in Great Britain’s favor. When the text became publicly known the francophilic Jeffersonians saw the direst of Federalist conspiracies afoot. Many of the “hawks” within Washington’s own circle did not like it either. There were no survey instruments in 1995 to capture the mood of the public, but Washington did not deceive himself. “[A]t present the cry against the Treaty is like that against a mad-dog; and every one in a manner, seems engaged in running it down.”16 Washington only cautiously emerged as a supporter of the treaty. He consulted with men he trusted. He examined the consequences of not ratifying the treaty—an escalation of British provocations, further immersion of the still-fragile Union into the affairs of Europe, a virtually nonexistent American military, the likelihood that failure to ratify would poison any future negotiations with Britain. In the end, he emerged as a publicly confident, but privately reluctant, supporter of the Treaty. The Senate approved the Treaty. It approved the Treaty despite a drumbeat of public opposition that, despite Washington’s hopes, never diminished. It approved the Treaty despite a Jeffersonian opposition in Congress (especially the House of Representatives) that was confident and formidable. It approved the Treaty in spite of a public debate that effectively demonstrated the weaknesses of the agreement. It approved the Treaty even though some in the President’s faction had doubts about it and were troubled that ratification would have grave electoral consequences for the Federalists and soon carry the day for the hated Jeffersonians. One can only wonder why the Treaty was ratified at all.17 The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) signed by President Clinton in 1996 presents a very different story. Clinton had submitted the Treaty to the Senate almost exactly one year after signing it. The Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, was an outspoken opponent of the Treaty and prevented the CTBT from reaching the floor for almost two years. After weeks of political maneuvering by opponents and supporters of the agreement the Treaty was finally defeated, 51–48. The Senate defeated it despite public opinion that remained solidly in favor of

The President as Moral Leader

15

the Treaty throughout. It defeated it even though the President’s approval ratings were consistently favorable. It defeated it even though the President’s party was almost unanimous in its support, while the Republican opposition (though holding a majority in both Houses) was demoralized from the effects of the 1998 election, the resultant leadership upheaval, and the ill effects of the putative effort to remove the President only a few months earlier.18 George Washington had almost everything working against him in his attempt to ratify Jay’s Treaty. Bill Clinton had almost all of the obvious political advantages in his favor when the CTBT was submitted to the Senate. The former prevailed; the latter didn’t. One resource that Bill Clinton could not draw upon was an unimpeachable presidential character. The just-concluded impeachment-and-removal process had left many of his opponents disgusted not only at his misconduct, but at the way in which he had skillfully outmaneuvered them. The same public opinion polls that revealed that many Americans thought Clinton was doing a satisfactory job as President also showed that they believed that their President had not told the truth. Conservatives loathed him—not just for the policies he advocated, but also for the way in which his private and public demeanor challenged their notions of how a President ought to behave. But his public character had alienated many of his own supporters as well. Numerous media reports spoke of Democrats exasperated by the obligation of defending the President, of having compromised their own integrity in that effort only to be undermined by Clinton’s later admissions, of dealing with a chief executive who teased them with his support and then abandoned them for the sake of political expedience, and of administrative subordinates ensnared by the web of disinformation and maneuver. When the CTBT came up for ratification there were lots of players conditioned to think in terms of a President looking for a political renaissance, not a President sincerely safeguarding the security of the nation.19 By contrast, George Washington had focused, sometimes to the exclusion of pursuing his own political agenda, on a course of conduct intended to reassure Americans and Congress that the presidency was an office to be trusted. Much of his adult life had been spent in creating and maintaining a public image of integrity and republican virtue.20 When he was contemplating the prospects of accepting the certain call to become President (surely a unique circumstance in American history!) Washington conducted an internal debate with himself (for there was no real opposition to his “ascension” to the office) over whether he should accept the presidency. To Alexander Hamilton he pleaded: For you know me well enough, my good Sir, to be persuaded, that I am not guilty of affectation, when I tell you, that it is my great and sole desire to live and die, in peace and retirement on my own farm. Were it even indispensable a different

16

George Washington

line of conduct [accepting the presidency] should be adopted; while you and some others who are acquainted with my heart would acquit, the world and Posterity might probably accuse me [of] inconsistency and ambition. Still I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man.21

His public life prior to his election to the presidency was rife with examples of his self-sacrifice, discipline, moral rectitude, and virtue. Even more important, these attributes had been amplified to near-mythic level by a degree of public adoration unknown in American history before or since. When George Washington entered the presidency he brought with him his status as the genuine national hero; the office was elevated because of its occupant, not the reverse. The presidency became imbued with the status and character of George Washington, something for which every subsequent President should be grateful. Other factors surely influenced the outcome of the Jay Treaty debate, but I believe that in the end it mattered that George Washington was for it. He was careful, even overly reticent, in advancing causes that he considered partisan and when he did act he rarely offered any extensive public explanation of his reasons. Instead, he simply asserted that the Treaty was in the national interest—that it offered the greatest opportunities for peace and prosperity. In the end, the Senate ratified the controversial Treaty in part because most of its members could not comprehend the possibility that George Washington might be insincere or duplicitous on an issue regarding the republic that he worked so mightily to establish. Character mattered. NOTES 1. Ralph Ketcham, Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789–1829 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 8. 2. Glenn A. Phelps, George Washington & American Constitutionalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 10. 3. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter (New York: John Wiley, 1980), pp. 44–79. Neustadt’s emphasis on reputation appears throughout the book, but it is most clearly expressed in chapters 4 and 5. 4. Each of the Articles of Impeachment concluded with “William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.” 5. See, for example, the essays in Gary L. Gregg II and Matthew Spalding, Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition (Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 1999). 6. For an interesting discussion of sexual misconduct from a constitutional per-

The President as Moral Leader

17

spective see Sanford Levinson, “On Interpretation: The Adultery Clause of the Ten Commandments,” Southern California Law Review 58 (1985), pp. 719–725. 7. Queries on a Line of Conduct to Be Pursued by the President, May 10, 1789, Writings, Vol. 30, 319–321. 8. William Maclay, Sketches of Debate in the First Senate of the United States (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, 1880), pp. 122–126. 9. Remarks Regarding the Trial of William Jefferson Clinton, Congressional Record, January 21, 1999. 10. For the most scathing treatment of Washington’s land dealings, see Bernhard Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1775 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1964). 11. See Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961). 12. An intelligent contemporary analysis of the issue of the relevance of Presidents’ personal lives to their public duties is James P. Pfiffner, “Presidential Character: Multidimensional or Seamless?” in Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, eds., The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2000), pp. 225–255. 13. James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 13. 14. Aaron Wildavsky, “The Two Presidencies,” Transaction 4 (1966), pp. 7–14. For an interesting reexamination of Wildavsky’s thesis, see Steven A. Shull, ed., The Two Presidencies: A Quarter Century Assessment (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991). 15. See Thomas Flexner, George Washington, Anguish and Farewell (1793– 1799) (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), p. 204. 16. Letter to Alexander Hamilton, July 29, 1795, in William B. Allen, George Washington: A Collection (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), p. 611. 17. The best summary of the controversy surrounding Jay’s Treaty remains, Jerald A. Combs, The Jay Treaty: Political Background of the Founding Fathers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970). 18. An excellent early account of the CTBT struggle can be found in Stephen I. Schwartz, “Outmaneuvered, Outgunned, and Out of View,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56 (January–February 2000), pp. 24–31. 19. Lest there be any misunderstanding, my point here is not that the President cynically used the Treaty for his own personal validation (Clinton had negotiated the treaty several years earlier before the Whitewater–Lewinsky troubles were yet to emerge), but rather that his pattern of conduct led many to believe that he was capable of such an action. 20. For an interesting exploration into the way in which Washington helped to create this public image, see Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, 1987). On the theatrical elements of Washington’s behavior that helped to create this image, see Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984). 21. Letter to Alexander Hamilton, August 28, 1788, in Allen, p. 417.

2 The Command of Its Own Fortunes: Reconsidering Washington’s Farewell Address Matthew Spalding

Along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796 is one of the great documents of American history. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison placed it on the primary reading list for the University of Virginia, describing it as one of “the best guides” to the “distinctive principles” of American government.1 John Quincy Adams hoped that it would “serve as the foundation upon which the whole system of [America’s] future policy may rise, the admiration and example of future time.”2 In his monumental biography of the first president, John Marshall described it as Washington’s “last effort to impress upon his countrymen those great political truths which had been the guides of his own administration,” and argued that it contained “precepts to which the American statesman can not too frequently recur.”3 Parson Weems, not one to be outdone, thought that “this little piece, about the length of an ordinary sermon, may do as much good to the people of America as any sermon ever preached, that DIVINE ONE on the mount excepted.”4 Today, the Farewell Address is primarily remembered for its recommendations concerning American involvement in international affairs. Washington sternly warned the nation to be constantly alert to the wiles of foreign influence and vigilant in preventing the excessive partisan spirit that foreign-policy question often encouraged. And in what became the cornerstone of American foreign policy over the next century, he recommended

20

George Washington

commercial relations with other nations, but as few political connections as possible. The policy received widespread support from the founding generation of American statesmen; Washington’s immediate successors—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—all strongly supported the concept of noninvolvement in the controversies and intrigues of the Old World. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, objecting to European colonization and the extension of foreign political institutions to the American continent, was but the most prominent corollary of Washington’s principles.5 John Quincy Adams understood the Farewell Address to advocate a strong nationalist foreign policy and not to limit America’s international activities, as did Lincoln’s Secretary of War, William H. Seward.6 The sage advice of the Farewell Address is not confined to the realm of foreign policy, however. Washington draws no clear division between domestic and foreign policies: the foundation of independence depends as much on good laws and just government as security and self-preservation. As the nation’s first President, Washington was particularly interested in the organization and administration of the offices and structure of the new nation. Often overlooked is Washington’s advice concerning federal union and the national constitution, faction and political parties, the separation of powers, religion and morality, knowledge and public credit. While seeming to focus on immediate concerns, the Address presents Washington’s understanding of the policies most conducive to the long-term safety and happiness of the American people. Washington hoped that future Americans would constantly recur to his advice and that this would have a moderating effect on the body politic, controlling the current of political passions and thereby preventing the American regime from following the path that had “hitherto marked the Destiny of Nations.”7 This broad reading of the Address began to narrow toward the end of the nineteenth century when the nation began to more actively consider its role in the world and parties on both sides of this debate looked to Washington for guidance in international affairs. When Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States in 1898 as part of the settlement of the Spanish-American War, for instance, opponents of annexation argued that the policy went against the principle of noninvolvement enunciated in the Farewell Address while supporters argued that the acquisition was in line with American principles of government found in the Declaration of Independence and the Farewell Address.8 The nationalists and internationalists of the early progressive era divided similarly, a split reflected in the differing opinions of Washington’s two progressive biographers Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge.9 When Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and proposed the League of Nations his staunchest opponent was then-chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Lodge, and the historical authority for Lodge’s opposition was Washington’s warning against permanent alliances found

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

21

in the Farewell Address. “Our entry in the great war just closed was entirely in accord with and violated in no respect the policy laid down by Washington,” Lodge argued to the Senate in 1919. “Now, in the twinkling of an eye, while passions and emotions reign, the Washington policy is to be entirely set aside and we are to enter upon a permanent and indissoluble alliance.”10 Although Lodge was advocating an active foreign policy, his efforts (and those of others like Senator William Borah of Idaho) were so effective in defeating the League of Nations that Washington’s sentiments came to be associated with a general policy of isolation and withdrawal from international affairs.11 Isolationists from the 1920s through the early 1940s regularly invoked Washington as their guiding patron and the Farewell Address as their central text, defending their policy as the “oldest doctrine” of American foreign policy, defined “during the first decade of our national life and by precept in Washington’s Farewell Address.”12 An exclusive focus on the foreign policy aspects of the Farewell Address has caused numerous problems for the legacy of the document. Not only are large portions of the document simply overlooked, but its argument is narrowed and not considered in light of any wider, overarching purpose. Felix Gilbert’s classic 1961 work on the Farewell Address, for instance, treats the Address as little else than an American statement of international relations theory, articulating the modern dilemma of international relations—“the tension between Idealism and Realism”—and defining the terms that are said to have always preoccupied American foreign policy.13 As a result, the foreign policy aspects of the Address are almost always themselves misunderstood. The flip side of those who see the document as an isolationist manifesto are the revisionists who read the Farewell Address’s discussion of commerce and foreign trade as a statement of political and commercial expansion—what historian William Appleman Williams called “a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengeable empire.” The Farewell Address “can be properly understood only in relation to Washington’s concept of his country’s imperial future,” writes Burton Ira Kaufman. It must be viewed as “a statement of empire” based on Washington’s vision of “an expanding nation and future world power.”14 The cumulative effect is that the advice of the Address is usually considered outdated and overcome by changed circumstances, written almost exclusively for the circumstances of 1796, with conclusions inapplicable to modern America. The Farewell Address becomes another one of those dusty, eighteenth-century documents thought to have little application to today’s modern and complicated society. What little there is to glean, many scholars are quick to tell us, has mostly to do with early American diplomatic history or the roots of isolationist foreign policy. Daniel Webster, speaking at the centennial of Washington’s birth in 1832, said the Address was “full of truths important at all times,” and called for “a renewed and wide diffusion of the admirable paper, and an

22

George Washington

earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and consider it.”15 Doing so not only suggests the veracity of the older understanding of the document—and shows the narrow foreign-policy reading to be woefully incorrect—but also draws the reader to Washington’s intended purpose and teaching. At the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, General Washington feared that victorious Americans would not seize the great moment before them to establish a new nation, but would instead become a weak power destined to remain “the sport of European politics,” with foreign nations playing one state against the other to serve their own interested purposes.16 Thirteen years later, as he was retiring from the presidency, that moment had been seized: the United States had not only won its independence but also established a new constitutional order. Washington was now concerned about the obstacles and potential threats ahead for the new nation; the challenge was no longer the establishment of institutions but their maintenance and perpetuation. The Farewell Address must be understood in this context. Washington’s general theme is the preservation of the Union as the core of American nationhood. The American people must come to “cherish a cordial, habitual and immoveable attachment” to the Union as the main pillar of their real independence, watch over its preservation with “jealous anxiety,” and disapprove any attempts to alienate its geographic sections or to “enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.” The ties that link the various parts—the foremost tie being the Union itself, the formal tie being the Constitution—must come to be seen as sacred and to be sacredly maintained. The main body of the Farewell Address is a long presentation of Washington’s reflections and advice on the many subjects that he thought crucial to America’s future, and can be grouped into six areas: first, a consideration of the necessity and importance of national union; second, of the Constitution and the rule of law; third, of political parties; fourth, a long discussion of the proper habits and dispositions of the people; fifth, of the threat of foreign influence in domestic affairs; and sixth, of international relations proper, covering foreign alliances, commercial policy, and neutrality. The movement of the address builds a case for the steps needed to perpetuate the Union—the most important being a well-formed constitution and the proper dispositions on the part of the people. These dispositions extend into foreign policy, where the theme is national independence. His advice is to maintain the Union, the Constitution, and the habits of good citizenship; his warnings are to distrust the passions of political parties, be wary of foreign influence, avoid an entangling foreign policy, and check anything that might undermine the Union, the Constitution, or the good dispositions of the people. In such an extensive republic, government must have as much vigor as

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

23

is consistent with the security of liberty and be able to resist the enterprises of faction in order to enforce the law and secure the rights of persons and property. This requires not a small and weak government but a strong government of adequate powers that are limited and properly distributed and balanced. It is in this context that Washington famously warns of “the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party,” a spirit inseparable from “our nature” and rooted in the “strongest passions” of the human mind, thus found to some extent or other in every form of government. Party spirit demands “a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.” A similar argument is found in Federalist 10, where James Madison famously writes that “the latent causes of faction” are “sown in the nature of man.”17 There Madison argues that there are two unacceptable ways to remove the causes of faction—either “destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence” or “giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests”—and concludes that relief is to be found in controlling its effects by extending the sphere of government so as to include a larger variety of parties and interests. Washington, while generally agreeing with Madison, is still interested in controlling, or at least moderating, the causes of party spirit and faction. An effort ought to be made to mitigate and assuage it, he argues, not by law or coercion but by “the force of public opinion.” His solution is not to increase the diversity of interests so much as to shape a common opinion that would transcend the petty and self-interested differences that divide men. This demands the cultivation of the proper habits and dispositions on the part of the people, habits and dispositions that will moderate the natural passions that, among other things, encourage party animosities. Washington believed that good political choices have critical and salutary effects on private behavior. By nourishing petty politics, speculation, and special interests, and in general aiding narrow political passions, bad government generates licentious appetites and corrupted morals. The new Constitution, Washington argues, actually encourages moderation and good habits of government. First, the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances thwart governmental despotism and encourage responsibility in public representatives. A responsible government, in turn, bolsters responsible people. Second, the legitimate constitutional amendment process allows democratic reform at the same time that it elevates the document above the popular passions of the moment, thereby encouraging deliberation and patience in the people. Good opinions in the people, and good government, will have a complementary effect on politics. But civic responsibility and the moderation of public passion also require the moderation of private passion through the encouragement of private morality. Free government is possible only if the public and private virtues needed for civil society and self-government remain strong and effective. In

24

George Washington

his First Inaugural Washington asserts that “there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.” He concludes that “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”18 In the Farewell Address the connection between private and public happiness makes education a requirement of good citizenship: “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” It also means that religion and morality are not only the props of duty, but also the indispensable supports of the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, and the great pillars of human happiness. Maintaining the Constitution and the rule of law, education, religion, and morality is central to achieving the collective national ends of safety and happiness— the alpha and the omega of America’s political existence. It is only at this point in the Address—over halfway through the text— that Washington turns to the question of foreign policy. Just as there is a clear connection between the private morality and public happiness of a people, so there is a connection between the virtue and happiness of a nation. Just as there are proper dispositions and habits of people toward each other, so too with nations. As he noted in his First Inaugural, “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the external rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.”19 The Farewell shifts to its foreign-policy discussion by first considering how the American people should think about other nations. His first foreign-policy counsel in the Farewell Address is the rather broad and highminded recommendation to “Observe good faith and justice towds. all Nations.” But if just and amicable relations with other nations are to be cultivated, then any “inveterate antipathies” or “passionate attachments” on the part of the people must first be overcome. Americans must be free from their hatreds and allegiances to foreign nations if they are to become partisans of their own. Preconceived positions restrict policy options and prevent the nation from responsibly choosing its own course. When these attachments dominate the public mind, they not only lead the nation away from its duty and interest but make the supposedly free nation “in some degree a slave” to the other. True independence is not only the absence of physical restraint and control but also the flourishing of an autonomous and free character. This requires not only freedom of action but also independent thinking. The problem, harkening back to the discussion of the spirit of party, is

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

25

that governments based on consent often follow the “national propensity” to adopt “through passion what reason would reject.” The habitual hatred of particular nations encourages insult and injury and this often leads to unnecessary conflicts and wars. At the same time foreign attachments encourage public support and national concessions on issues where no common interest exists. They also bring the nation imprudently into the particular quarrels and disputes of the other. And passionate attachments to foreign nations have the added problem of giving to “ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens” an easy opportunity to betray their country without malice or popular disapproval. Those who resist favoritism—the “real patriots” like Washington—are the ones who become “suspected and odious” while the “tools and dupes” often gain the approval and support of the people. This creates a situation wherein the favored nation is in a position to influence the domestic politics and popular opinion of the other. This destines small, weak, and politically vulnerable nations to be subject to large, strong, and opinionated ones. As a result of these observations Washington delivers his second famous warning: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.” Foreign influence, in addition to the “baneful effects” of party, is “one of the most baneful foes of Republican government.” By opening the door to foreign influence, passionate foreign attachments should be “particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot.” Washington recommends as the great rule of conduct that the United States primarily pursue commercial relations with other nations, and have with them “as little political connection as possible.” He was acutely aware of the many European wars—four between 1689 and 1763—that because of various political connections to the New World ended up being fought on North American soil. Young Washington served in the last, the Seven Years’ War, and saw firsthand how imperial competition between Britain and France not only brought added financial burdens but also demanded great sacrifice on the part of American colonials. Europe had its own competing interests, and Washington thought that they should have only a remote relationship to the new nation. Binding the destiny of America to Europe would only serve to unnecessarily “entangle” the new nation’s peace and prosperity with “the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour [and] Caprice.” In order to prevent it from becoming a pawn in European politics, America, Washington reasoned, should take and defend a more independent position. “Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course,” Washington writes. This course is suggested in what is probably the most quoted—and misinterpreted—passage of the whole document, in which Washington warns against excessive ties with

26

George Washington

other countries: “’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.” Although this statement is usually cited to support a position of isolationism, it is difficult to construe Washington’s words as strict noninvolvement in the political and military affairs of the world. For one, the activities of his administration suggest no such policy; if any group could be considered isolationist it was the more radical Republicans in Congress.20 The infamous warning against “entangling alliances,” often attributed to the Farewell Address, is to be found in the 1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson. (President Jefferson described the “essential principles” of American foreign policy as “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”21) President Washington warned against political connections and permanent alliances with other nations. And he added the hedge “So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do.” In order to maintain a strong defensive posture, the nation could depend on “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” The proclivity to interpret Washington’s great rule of conduct as a call for an isolationist foreign policy causes the reader to overlook the real message about international relations, for it is in defining the political nonentanglement position—commercial relations with as few political connections as possible—that Washington shifts the argument from one based solely on interest to one based on interest and justice. “Observe good faith and justice toward other nations,” Washington writes. Indeed, he directly links interest and justice: “Religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?” Washington favored harmony and liberal intercourse with all nations, a position that he says is recommended by “policy, humanity and interest.” Commerce, not conquest or subservience, will be the primary means of America for acquiring goods and dealing with the world. Commercial policy should be impartial, neither seeking nor granting favors or preferences, and flexible, changing from time to time “as experience and circumstances shall dictate.” Even under the best circumstances, however, economic and trade policy should always be conducted in ways that would maintain American independence. Washington followed these principles when he declared in April 1793 that the United States would remain neutral in the war between Great Britain and France. He argues that “[t]he duty of holding a Neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every Nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of Peace and amity towards other Nations.” The important qualification “free to act” is, of course, the key to this passage. This policy is not the result of utopian idealism, depending on the goodwill of other nations. It is foolish for the nation to look for “disinterested favors” from other nations; doing so would jeopardize its autonomy. Nations that depend on the patronage of

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

27

other nations must pay with a portion of their independence: “There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation.” For Washington, neutrality is not merely an attempt to avoid war but rather a call to develop the ability to prevent other nations from forcing the United States to act in violation of its independence. Washington argues that the United States should take advantage of the peculiar political and geographic situation it providentially found itself in to pursue a long-term strategy of placing itself in a position to defy external threats and choose its own course as a nation. This is Washington’s final recommendation—indeed, the overarching theme of his whole understanding of foreign and defense policy. Note the Farewell Address’s conclusion on this matter: If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by our justice shall counsel.

Washington goes on to say that the “predominant motive” of all of his policies, both foreign and domestic, is to gain time for the country to “settle and mature its yet recent institutions.” Doing so would build the political, economic, and physical strength—and the international standing—necessary to give the nation “the command of its own fortunes.” Rather than a passive condition of detachment, Washington describes an active policy of national independence as necessary for America, at some not too distant period in the future, to determine its own fate. Washington further explained this view in a letter to Morris in late 1795, important to quote at length because its ideas and phrases would be repeated in the Farewell Address one year later: It is well known that Peace has been (to borrow a modern phraze) the order of the day with me, since the disturbances in Europe first commenced. My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfill our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so; and that nothing short of self respect, and that justice which is essential to a national character, ought to involve us in War; for sure I am, if this country is preserved in tranquillity twenty years longer, it may bid defiance, in a just cause, to any power whatever, such, in that time, will be its population, wealth, and resource.22

28

George Washington

Noted diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis refers to the Farewell Address as nothing less than a second Declaration of Independence, a statement of “vigilant defense and maintenance of sovereign national independence against foreign meddling” intended foremost to establish a strong, self-determined, and independent foreign policy.23 But I am not sure that this observation goes far enough. In the Farewell Address, Washington means to articulate the highest possible common ground of American foreign policy. While appreciating the difficulties, prejudices, and selfinterested character of politics, he seeks to elevate that politics by pointing toward something higher and nobler. A more complete way to understand what Washington means is to recall the classic goal for a political community: self-sufficiency. Neither exclusively nor even primarily material, self-sufficiency encompasses more a sense of moral purpose and well-being—sovereignty in the fullest and most complete sense.24 For America this means a free people governing themselves, establishing their own laws, and setting up a government they think will best insure their own safety and happiness. Or as the Declaration of Independence says: “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them” and obtain the full power to do the “Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” That is, to choose according to the cousel of our interest guided by our justice. The key to American self-sufficiency, as Washington saw it, is to find the political grounds that will successfully reconcile the claims of interest and the requirements of necessity with the demands of justice and humanity. While this balance is especially difficult in foreign affairs, Washington nevertheless thought it possible to have a foreign policy that is neither driven by force nor idealism, on the one hand, or ignorant of necessity and principle, on the other. In the end, to have the command of its own fortunes means that America has the full use of its independence—not to impose its will on other nations but to prove without help or hindrance from other nations the viability of republican government. When a foreign power tells America “what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little,” Washington wrote Alexander Hamilton.25 Washington’s understanding of independence from foreign influence—and its relationship to the national character—is spelled out in a 1795 letter to Patrick Henry. “My ardent desire is, and my aim has been,” Washington explained, to comply strictly with all our engagements, foreign and domestic; but to keep the U States free from political connexions with every other country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for our-

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

29

selves and not for others; this in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home and not be becoming the partizans of Great Britain or France, create dissensions, disturb the public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps for ever the cement wch. binds the Union.26

At the beginning of the Farewell Address, Washington tells his countrymen that the American experiment—to bring about the happiness of the people under the auspices of liberty—will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and the adoption of every nation that is yet a stranger to it. The foreign-policy component of the American Revolution, then, is to make the principles and practices of freedom the envy of the world: “It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give mankind the too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” The elevating theme of America’s international purpose is to give moral content to its national interests. “Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?” Washington asks. “The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.” Washington directs the Farewell Address to his “Friends and Fellow Citizens,” and this salutation clearly includes recognition of an international audience. By use of the word “friends” Washington means to include those who were not his fellow Americans but were the citizens of foreign nations, a point further emphasized by the fact that the address was issued not from Mount Vernon or New York but from the United States. And the final say as to whether Washington has been faithful in discharging his duties is left “to You and to the world.” Washington is addressing his advice to all the friends of republicanism and, indeed, the opinions of mankind; he is appealing to the natural ground of peaceful and just relations among all human beings, whatever conventional divisions might separate and distinguish them. Nevertheless, the salutation also reflects an understanding of his domestic audience. Early in the Farewell Address Washington hopes that not just Union but “Union and brotherly affection be perpetual,” and later warns of a perception of local interests and views that tend to render “alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.” While commercial and security interests—the traditional concerns of diplomacy and foreign policy—cement the relationship, true political harmony will exist only if Americans are tied together by the bonds of civic friendship. In the end, Washington reflects Aristotle’s classic observation that it is friendship, not force or chance, that ultimately holds political communities together. For the American experiment to work, the American people must remain what Washington thought them to be, friends and fellow citizens. Wash-

30

George Washington

ington warns Americans that they must be ever vigilant in maintaining their constitutional government and assuring their independence, yet the real challenge is to maintain the character of the people both at home and abroad by guarding and encouraging the habits and dispositions most conducive to republican government. It is the success of this task—maintaining the American character and thereby proving that we can, indeed, govern ourselves—that gives to mankind the novel example of a just and benevolent people and allows Americans the glory of recommending their nation “to the applause, the affection, and adoption” of the nations of the world.

NOTES 1. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, February 8, 1825, in Marvin Meyers, ed., The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1981), pp. 348–350. 2. John Quincy Adams to Washington, February 11, 1797, in Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973), p. 64. 3. John Marshall, The Life of George Washington (1801–1805; reprint, Fredricksburg, Va.: The Citizens’ Guild of Washington’s Boyhood Home, 1926), Vol. V, p. 279. According to Marshall, the Farewell Address, “though long, is thought too valuable to be omitted or abridged.” It is reprinted in full, pp. 279–306. 4. Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 141. 5. See J. Reuben Clark, Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine, December 17, 1923 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1930), pp. ix–xxv and 14– 15. 6. Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973) pp. 62–65. William H. Seward, May 11, 1863, in Alan Dowty, The Limits of American Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1971), p. 5. 7. Washington, “The Farewell Address,” in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931–44), Vol. 35, pp. 214–238. Future references use paragraph numbers that correspond with the reprinted Address, as: par. 42. 8. Fred H. Harrington, “The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898–1900,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXII (September 1935), pp. 211–212. For the other side of the question see the debate in the Senate during the first three months of 1899 over the peace treaty with Spain, especially speeches by Senators Mason (January 10) and Lodge (March 7). A more theoretical argument on this ground was made by Alpheus H. Snow, Proceedings of the American Political Science Association (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1914), pp. 110–111. The President of Hobart College, for instance, argued that Washington never intended his advice to restrict the nation permanently but only to lay the ground for an independent, strong, and active (even expansionist) nation on the world stage. Robert Ellis Jones, “Washington’s Farewell Address and Its Application,” reprinted from

The Command of Its Own Fortunes

31

Forum, XXVII (September 1899), in Burton Ira Kaufman, Washington’s Farewell Address: The View from the 20th Century (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), pp. 35–52. 9. See Patrick J. Garrity, “Young Men in a Hurry: Roosevelt, Lodge, and the Foundations of Twentieth Century Republicanism,” in Thomas B. Silver and Peter W. Schramm, eds., Natural Right and Political Right (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984) pp. 225–233. 10. Henry Cabot Lodge, “Speech before the United States Senate,” February 28, 1919, quoted in Kaufman, p. 65. 11. See Dowty, The Limits of American Isolation, foreword and chapter one, passim, pp. vii–27. 12. Herbert Adams Gibbons, America’s Place in the World (New York: The Century Co., 1924), p. 31. 13. Felix Gilbert, The Beginnings of American Foreign Policy: To the Farewell Address (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 136. 14. Burton Ira Kaufman, “A Statement of Empire,” in Kaufman, p. 171. 15. Edwin P. Whipple, ed., The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1894), pp. 342, 344. 16. Washington, Circular to the States, June 8, 1783, in Fitzpatrick, Vol. XXVI, pp. 483–496. 17. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961), #10, p. 79. 18. Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789, in Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 291–296. 19. Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789, in Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 291–296. 20. John C. Miller, The Federalist Era 1789–1801 (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 197–198. 21. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, in Peterson, p. 494. 22. Washington to Gouverneur Morris, December 22, 1795, in Fitzpatrick, Vol. 34, p. 401. A similar letter was written by Washington to Charles Carroll, May 1, 1796, in Fitzpatrick, Vol. 35, pp. 29–31. 23. Samuel Flagg Bemis, “Washington’s Farewell Address: A Foreign Policy of Independence,” in The American Historical Review, XXXIX (January 1934), pp. 250–268. 24. I am indebted to Patrick Garrity for this insight. See chapter four of A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character, by Matthew Spalding and Patrick Garrity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). 25. Washington to Alexander Hamilton, May 8, 1796, in Fitzpatrick, Vol. 35, p. 40. 26. Washington to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, in Fitzpatrick, Vol. 34, p. 335 (all emphasis in original).

3 Washington as Cincinnatus: A Model of Leadership Jason S. Lantzer

The story of George Washington has become so synonymous with that of the United States that it is often overlooked. This is a mistake. As historian Garry Wills once said, “The man we can hardly find was the icon our ancestors turned to most easily and often.” Washington’s story still has much to teach Americans today, about who they are and where they come from. Furthermore, it is an excellent example of the triumphs and tragedies that can befall leaders of men. Men of Washington’s caliber are missing from the political scene of today, not because they do not exist, but because the American people lack the knowledge of the model that made the man.1 If Washington should be reelevated as an example of what a leader can be, then it is proper to look at what people and events had an impact on or influenced him during the course of his life. Perhaps the most often made parallel to Washington throughout history has been the Roman hero Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus came to Rome’s aid in its hour of need and once the danger had passed, returned to his farm rather than become either dictator or king. Obviously the story is ripe for comparison with the father of the United States, who saved his nation on more than one occasion from forces that were ready to tear it apart and then retired to his farm.2 Still, the transformation of Washington into an eighteenth-century Cincinnatus could not have been automatic. It was a process that took time. The story of Cincinnatus is more than a Roman myth, it is a model for personal growth. When applied, the Cincinnatus model takes a person’s

34

George Washington

focus away from his or her individual desires and directs them toward something larger than self. Washington, for his part, tried two other models before adhering to the Cincinnatus one. The first is the famous Rules of Civility and Order. While the Rules provided George with the social skills that he needed to become a gentleman, they did not offer him the opportunity to expand beyond that role. However, because of the Rules, he was able to discover the source of his second life model, that of Cato. This gave rise to George’s quest for personal honor, something that is referred to as the Fairfax model. This was a dangerous path for a man with George’s temperament to follow, but follow it he did for well over a decade. At the end of the French and Indian War, George returned to the Cincinnatus model, which he had first discovered alongside Cato, and never strayed from it again. It was the Cincinnatus that made the man, not the other two.3 The model was more than a convenient parallel for both Washington’s contemporaries and later historians to use in describing his life. The father of his country’s life was seemingly cut from the same cloth as the Cincinnatus story. And yet, one is left to wonder just how a Roman hero of antiquity first became a role model for a colonial planter? The roots of the answer can be found in George’s family history and in how the other models prepared him to accept the Cincinnatus role for his country. The Washington family were Royalists, who fled England during the Civil War of 1657. Though transplanted to the wilds of colonial Virginia, they continued to have the air of the lesser nobility about them. Augustine Washington, the grandson of these first American Washingtons, worked all his life to break into the upper crust of colonial Virginian society. He left this dream as a legacy to be fulfilled by his sons. The older boys, including George, were raised to become true gentlemen, which included training in being self-conscious about the moral and social values necessary for public leadership.4 George’s education came in several stages. The first was the only formal schooling he ever received. His time at the schoolhouse ended with the death of his father, as did the dream that he would one day study in England as had his two older brothers. It provided him with very little, outside of the ability to read and write, and the discovery that he was good with numbers. But Augustine Washington’s death did not end the dream of George becoming a gentleman. He continued to learn, only in new ways. The remainder of his education was self-taught, either in the wilderness or in the library, and had a larger impact on his life than sitting in school did. He came to believe that experience was the best teacher, so long as past mistakes were not repeated. What he learned, either in the classroom or in the fields, he adhered to, to a degree that often shocked his contemporaries. His memorization and practice of The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation stands as the classic example of this. To

Washington as Cincinnatus

35

many observers, both then and now, it seems as though he was doing nothing more than performing the role of a gentleman as prescribed by the Rules.5 The opportunity to become self-taught was provided him, in large part, because of his association with the Fairfax family. George came to their notice because of the marriage of his older brother Lawrence into the powerful family. Lawrence’s home, Mount Vernon, neighbored Belvoir, the home of the Fairfaxes. The younger Washington at first patterned his life after Lawrence, whom he considered to be his best friend. Lawrence Washington had been educated in England and served in the War of Jenkin’s Ear before getting married. George was included in the joint activities of the two households whenever he was at Mount Vernon, which was as often as he could manage. Lord Fairfax, who had left England to view his colonial holdings, introduced the boy to classical literature, particularly the Stoic philosophers, such as Seneca, and the heroes of ancient Rome. Undoubtedly, Washington came across the story of Cincinnatus at this time. Whether he consciously took the tale as a model is beside the point. Something of it stayed with him for the rest of his life and was noticeable to his contemporaries, though before it would reach fruition, it had several obstacles to face and other models to overcome. By the end of his life, Washington would be able to say “system in all things should be aimed at, for in execution, it renders every thing more easy.” The Rules had provided him with the opportunity to expand beyond the life of a gentleman and find a better model to live by.6 George’s childhood can be summed up in these words: comfort but little elegance. As a firstborn son of a second wife, George received very little in the form of an inheritance when his father died. Ferry Farm was barely viable and was dominated by his mother, Mary Ball Washington. He spent many days at the home of Lawrence, contemplating his future. To become the gentleman he aspired to be, George knew he needed to make money so he could buy land. The easiest avenue open to him, because of his knowledge of numbers and his strength and endurance, was that of a surveyor. At the tender age of seventeen, in 1748, with the help of Lord Fairfax, he was certified as an official surveyor of Culpepper County and sent out to survey the Fairfaxes’ Blue Ridge Mountain lands. During the next four years he would make several more trips to the wilds west of settled Virginia. He made good money as a surveyor and by the time he was twenty-one, had been able to purchase 1,558 acres of his own.7 The wealth that Washington acquired from surveying allowed him to rise up the social ladder quickly and also provided him with a test. While he held Cincinnatus as a model in the back of his mind, which is to say that he should have been disinterested in achieving personal glory or fame, his burning desire to be accepted as a gentleman, to be respected, was leading him down a different path. The Cincinnatus model, still young in

36

George Washington

his mind, was under attack from the opportunities that his prominent connections were making available to him. This opposite position was the Fairfax model and until 1755, they would battle for George’s soul and can be traced to Addison’s Cato, which George loved. Cato is a tragic tale of Republican Era Rome. It is seductively similar in appearance to the Cincinnatus tale, but far enough away to be anathema to it, for Cato places honor above principle.8 In 1753, through politicking, Washington was able to become a major in the Virginia Colonial Militia. This allowed him the opportunity to accept a commission from the Ohio Company and the colony of Virginia to first warn and, if necessary, expel, the French from the western lands both France and England claimed. Since Washington had surveyed much of this territory, and since he was a favorite of the Fairfaxes, it was only natural that he be asked to take the message to the French. He jumped at the chance out of a sense of pride. He believed that a Royal Commission would secure him, socially, as a gentleman and that the mission was the quickest route to one. No matter what title Virginia gave him, it could not match the honor of serving “King and Country.” The Fairfax model was in the ascendancy.9 Washington’s trip to France’s Fort Le Boeuf, located in present-day Pennsylvania, was full of diplomatic intrigue and danger. The young Virginian came to believe that the French had hired Indians to kill him on his way home. He arrived in Williamsburg safe, having survived an assassination attempt, a dunk in the frozen Allegheny River, and travel through the wilderness in the dead of winter. He convinced Governor Robert Dinwiddie that Virginia must move ahead with the military option to expel the French.10 The governor agreed, and a plan was drawn up to build a fort to protect the colony’s western frontier and thus “prove” Virginia’s claim to the area. In March of 1754, Washington was placed in operational command of a fort-building army. George was enthusiastic about the opportunity to confront the French, even though he had problems raising his army. He was so eager to see action that he set out into the wilderness before his commander could join the force he did manage to muster. Washington was an ambitious colonial with ambiguous orders, sent into the frontier to confront an empire. The end result of all this ambition, youth, and eagerness was the Fort Necessity debacle that would mark the height of George’s rebelliousness to the Cincinnatus model and the beginning of the end of the Fairfax model.11 The opening shots of the French and Indian War were fired by Washington. He had hastily constructed a fort, named “Necessity,” after learning of French forces approaching his position from their recently constructed Fort Duquesne. The French fort was strategically placed to control the flow of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers, and was in the same

Washington as Cincinnatus

37

place that Washington had planned to build Virginia’s fort. The Virginians and their Indian allies were able to take an advance French force by surprise, but after a large army arrived, the Virginians were defeated at Fort Necessity. The French then told Washington that the group he had attacked had been on a diplomatic mission. He was forced to leave his fort on July 3, 1754, after signing a treaty in which he unwittingly admitted to being an assassin and trespassing on French soil.12 At the tender age of twenty-two, Washington became a hero to his neighbors and known around the world. The French confiscated some of his belongings from the abandoned fort, among them a letter Washington had written to one of his younger brothers. In it, he said, “I heard the bullet’s whistle and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.” The French took great delight in publishing both the letter and the confession in Europe. When King George II read the letter, he was supposed to have remarked that “he [Washington] would not think so if he had been used to hear[ing] many.” Britain’s Agent for Indian Affairs remarked on the Fort Necessity debacle that Washington had been “too ambitious at acquiring all the honor.” Virginia, on the other hand, believed that the French had outnumbered Washington, not outcommanded him.13 All the observers were correct on some level. Washington would learn to grow tired of war. His ambition had caused him to take many chances. He had built Fort Necessity in the middle of a meadow, which was surrounded by a dense forest. This caused his Indian allies to abandon him, but only after he had run out of food and no reinforcements with fresh supplies had arrived. He had been outnumbered by the French, and had wet powder that made it impossible for his men to fire at the enemy. Washington felt he was thoroughly dishonored after Fort Necessity, despite the cheers he received. He did not speak a word from the time he left the fort until he returned to Williamsburg. Once there, however, he did not look at his own rashness in attacking the French, but laid the blame on others. Dinwiddie wanted him to go out again in July of 1754, but Washington refused, citing a depleted force, inadequate supplies, and the governor’s reluctance to ask the House of Burgesses to raise the money necessary to rectify the situation. When news arrived that Great Britain was going to send forces to fight the war that Virginia had started, Washington angrily resigned from the militia rather than be demoted from colonel to major, and went home.14 But the desire for honor had not left him. George believed that he had found salvation in the form of British General Edward Braddock. Parliament sent the Scotsman to the colonies to do what they believed only professional soldiers could do, defeat the French. The colonials, obviously, were not up to the task. Again using his connections, Washington was able to have himself attached to Braddock’s staff as an unofficial advisor. He believed that if he served the commander of the British forces well, he

38

George Washington

would be rewarded with a royal commission. And, he was happy to be back in the action. Braddock’s forces in the area outnumbered those of France by at least 5:1, and they were an awesome sight to behold as they paraded before the ladies of Williamsburg. Washington was proud to be a part of such a fine force, which would, he was sure, vindicate both his personal and professional honor. Everyone associated with the British force believed that they would defeat the French easily.15 But problems soon developed. In addition to a growing air of overconfidence, Braddock himself became a source of uncertainty. The general had plenty of experience in fighting European-style wars, in which the opposing armies faced each other across open fields. He had no experience in fighting “Indian style,” and firmly believed that the French would draw up into lines to face him once he arrived near their fort. He was so confident in this scenario that he disregarded Washington’s advice on the dangers posed by France’s Indian allies and about the fact that the British Army’s red uniforms stood out in the forests they were marching through. The British military’s advance on Fort Duquesne was slowed by the engineers’ demands that time be allowed for them to cut a “proper” road through the forest rather than use the existing trails. Washington advised the general that the column’s advance was, no doubt, being monitored by the French, and that if they did not hurry, the fort could be reinforced. Braddock again disregarded the Virginian’s words of wisdom. After all, was not this the same man who had been beaten by the French the year before?16 Like Washington, Braddock believed that the taking of Fort Duquesne would end the frontier war. The fort was the heart of France’s attempt at expanding New France to the south. As the British slowly approached the fort, Washington grew deathly sick. He was sent to the rear of the column, but as the advance force closed in, he mounted his horse and caught up with the rest of Braddock’s staff. He did not want to miss out on the attack on the fort and, at the same time, was concerned with Braddock’s ability to handle the chaos of a frontier battle. He arrived on the morning of July 9, 1755, when all hell was about to break loose.17 The French and Indians attacked when the British were a few miles from the fort. The British were hit from the left, front, and right, which drove their fleeing units into ones that were advancing into the area. Chaos ensued as Braddock and all his officers were wounded during the battle. Washington soon found himself in command. His illness was quickly forgotten as rage overcame him at the sight of British regulars fleeing and Virginians being cut down in a horrible crossfire. He started a somewhat orderly retreat and ordered the wounded loaded onto wagons. Washington remained unharmed, despite having two horses shot out from under him and four bullets rip through his clothes. Still with fever, he road forty miles at night to get reinforcements, but to no avail. Braddock died and his grand army was shattered. It was left to Washington to bury the general in a

Washington as Cincinnatus

39

location that no Indian would ever find. The Virginian entombed the Scotsman in the middle of the road that the British engineers had built. After performing a brief service, George ordered wagons to cross over the spot, so as to make it undetectable.18 Part of Washington’s rebelliousness against the Cincinnatus model was buried with Braddock, though not all of it. The Fairfax model’s quest for honor still clung to life. But George no longer wanted a royal commission, for he had seen how royal officers acted toward colonials. In 1755, he was made a colonel of Virginia’s militia and commander-in-chief of all her forces. For the next three years, despite his new position, Washington remained mad at Governor Dinwiddie. George was ordered to defend Virginia’s over 400 miles of frontier with only a few hundred men, which he took to be an insult. Meanwhile, the British were busy working on a new plan to destroy the French without him. He felt as though he was on a forgotten front, especially as clashes between the two European empires took place in the northern colonies. However, he did not resign as he had before, though he threatened to on several occasions. This was a big step for him, because he was no longer concerned with using the war to advance himself. Washington now worried about how such an action would affect Virginia’s honor, not just his own. His broader, yet still parochial, outlook caused him to grow disillusioned with the war. By the time of Pitt’s offensive in 1758, he was ready to retire and pursue other things.19 Though George was no longer a rash hothead when it came to military matters, his brashness, when it came to his honor, took longer to die. Something other than experience was needed to subdue it. That something turned out to be a wife. In January of 1759, with Virginia safe, he resigned his commission and headed home to Mount Vernon. He soon married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow with two small children. They had been introduced sometime in early 1758 and he had visited her once in March and again in June. By September, their romance was alive. They were married on January 6, 1759. That he loved Martha there is little doubt. Nor is there any doubt that her wealth transformed him from a minor planter into a major one. He no longer needed military accolades to secure his stature in the community. Becoming a family man had a pacifying effect on Washington. His marriage served as a vaccine for pride and glory and as a means to revitalize the long-dormant Cincinnatus model.20 Washington became a burgess in 1758 and though he enjoyed his time in Williamsburg, the position meant little to him other than it was something expected of a gentleman. After his retirement and marriage, Washington allowed outside events to pass him by. The Proclamation of 1763 got his attention in ways that something like the Stamp Act never would, because the things he loved were being threatened. George III, convinced that his empire was too large, ordered his American colonists to stay east of the Allegheny Mountains. This action left the newly won west for the

40

George Washington

Indians. To Washington, who had spent his boyhood beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains and had invested so much of his time, money, and blood into those lands, the Proclamation was unthinkable. While he considered himself an Englishman, he defined himself by what it meant to be a Virginian Englishman, and that was to prove to be the crucial difference in the years ahead.21 It would be fair to characterize Washington as a reluctant revolutionary in the years between the French and Indian War and the deterioration of England’s relationship with her colonies in the mid-1770s. He was surely no Sam Adams. As a successful planter, George was politically conservative, and his voting record in the House of Burgesses reflects this. He had much to lose if things changed drastically, and yet, he was often an advocate of change if it was for the better. His desire to change started with his concern over the best way to manage his farms. When he came to the conclusion that he was not getting a fair price for his tobacco or good service from his agent in London, Washington decided to stop relying on the crop to pay his bills. He diversified Mount Vernon’s fields to include wheat, hemp, flax, alfalfa, and buckwheat. He also expanded his fisheries and built a new gristmill. These improvements increased his wealth and stature. They also contributed to his desire to not see things change.22 Yet, now that he had returned to the Cincinnatus model, he could not resist the call of his country in its hour of need. He grew increasingly frustrated with England’s nonresponse to the colonies’ petitions and came to believe that the British were trying to change the administrative relationship between the mother country and her American colonies. This Washington could not in good conscience tolerate. He came out against the Boston Port Act, saying, “the cause of Boston . . . now and forever will be considered the cause of America.” He became a member of the Fairfax County Committee of Safety, and learned republican theory from his neighbor George Mason. It was Washington who put forth the latter’s nonimportation resolves to the House of Burgesses in 1769, which got the legislative body dissolved.23 He was among the top three recipients of votes to form Virginia’s delegation to the First Continental Congress in 1774. He came in behind the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, Peyton Randolph, and Richard Henry Lee, but ahead of Patrick Henry. Thomas Jefferson, who would rise to prominence in the years ahead, received no votes. It was widely believed that Virginia counted on Henry to say something magnificent and Washington to do the right thing while at the convention. Little came of the meeting and the problems with England continued. Washington had hoped that time would take care of the rift that was clearly growing between the colonies and England. But after the battles of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, he realized that it would never heal on its own. Action was required. He wrote to his old friend and neighbor George William Fairfax

Washington as Cincinnatus

41

in England asking, “Can a virtuous man hesitate?” He could not, because the legacy of Cincinnatus was calling him into the fray.24 Washington went to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and served on all of its military committees. At the start of the convention, he probably had no greater ambition than to lead Virginia’s forces again, which surely would have been his job if the model had not intervened. He may have been reluctant to be named commander-in-chief of the colonial military effort, but was open to the call despite his attachments to Virginia, because the Cincinnatus model had further broadened his perspective. He was so embarrassed by John Adams’s nominating speech for the position of commander-in-chief of the colonial military effort that he left the room before the vote was taken. He was so in shock, once named to the post, that he had to have a letter to Martha dictated on June 18, 1775 because he could not trust his hand. In the letter, he assured her that he had not sought the command, but once it had been offered to him, he found that he could not refuse it, telling her, “I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it.” A day later, on June 19, he wrote his stepson that accepting the command was something that he had to do. When he had sought fame earlier in his life, he never achieved it. Now that fame sought him, he found that he did not want it. The model was at work in his life.25 One of the attractions of Washington to men like Adams was that he was a southerner. At the time, the army was made up almost entirely of northerners. His appointment was viewed as a way to unite the colonies in the war effort and it was a difficult responsibility that George took very seriously. He told Congress in his acceptance speech that “I feel great distress, from consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust.” Once named commander, he refused a salary. By doing so, he protected himself from all sorts of charges. Additionally, his financial management of the army quickly won him the respect of New Englanders. While he had matured considerably, he still had a problem of acknowledging his mistakes, as the New York campaign would prove. But he no longer fumed in public and was able to learn from his mistakes and seize opportunities, as Trenton and Princeton would show. This newfound knowledge ultimately cultimated in the victory at Yorktown.26 The key for Washington in winning the American Revolution was to keep his army in the field. It was at the siege of Boston that he first realized this. Though he hoped for a quick victory, something that would shock the British into realizing the enormity of the situation, he concluded that as long as there were American forces in the countryside, the British could not claim victory no matter how many battles they won. Not only was this sound military strategy, it also proved very practical. The reason was that armies were not replaceable in the modern sense. If the British captured

42

George Washington

Washington’s army, the American cause was finished for the simple reason that another army could not be raised. Although his fellow countrymen would not always recognize both the brilliance and the necessity of the tactic, the British did. Early on, they came to acknowledge that Washington and his army were the heart and soul of the rebellion. So long as either of them existed, the war would continue. The way Washington achieved his goal of keeping a force in the field was to make the most of what he had, and when it came to the colonies, this was a major accomplishment in and of itself.27 As if this was not enough of a challenge, Washington also had to make Congress realize that it would take more than colonial militias to win the war. He needed a professional army with which to face the British. This was hardly an easy subject to bring before the republican-minded Congress, since they feared standing armies and the consolidation of power into military hands. Washington had to constantly plead to Congress for more men, longer enlistment periods, and needed supplies. These were all things that Congress was reluctant to give, for fear that Washington would use these new powers to overthrow them. They stalled for every possible reason, even though they often realized that it was detrimental to the war effort.28 Because of congressional reluctance and ineptness to supply even basic needs, such as food, shoes, and powder, the army grew to hate their representatives. This hatred was further intensified by Congress’s difficulty in paying the enlisted men and officers on time, if at all. The men felt that Congress was full of “intrigue, factional strife, embezzlement of public funds, profiteering in procuring army supplies, and speculation based on secret information.” For the most part, the army was right. In the winter of 1778–1779, Washington found this out for himself, when he came to Philadelphia to confer with Congress on the course of the war. What he saw there shocked him and confirmed what his troops had been mumbling about in camp. While his own men were in desperate straits, their representatives lived in the very lap of luxury. Washington left in a rage and quickly returned to his troops.29 Despite being far away from home, often defeated, ill fed, ill equipped, and unpaid, the army maintained strangely high morale. While they may have had no faith in Congress, the men maintained a high regard for Washington, because of his example. They loved their general because they knew that he had faith in them. Because of this, and their belief in his personal integrity, Washington was able to quell a pay revolt among his officers by sheer force of personality and his mere presence at the meeting.30 With the end of the war, Washington stunned the world by surrendering his sword to Congress on December 23, 1783. He said, “I consider myself to have done only my duty . . . my services I consider as my country’s due.” Washington was following the model to the letter. The danger to his coun-

Washington as Cincinnatus

43

try having ended, it was time to return to the plow. He truly did retire from public life, hoping to give moral weight to his resignation. He sent a letter to the states, promising not to take “any share in public business hereafter.” Washington even went so far as to resign from his church vestry board to underscore his intentions. To let the idea that he was no longer in command sink in, Washington took a vacation to the West and visited his distant land holdings in September of 1784. He enjoyed his retirement and kept busy by working to improve his farms and keeping in touch with fellow Revolutionary War veterans.31 As time passed though, he came to realize that while the external danger to American had been expelled, the internal one had not. During the war, Washington had caught a glimpse of the nation’s potential greatness and did not like what he saw in the floundering of the Articles of Confederation government. He saw the unity that the Revolution had caused between the states withering away under the strain of a central government that was too weak to exercise even the few powers it did have. In his resignation letter to the states, he had spoken of the need for a strong central government and union. The states had not heeded his warning that without these things, trouble was inevitable. He became a quiet advocate for a stronger national government. Washington was kept abreast of what was going on within the Confederation government by John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Henry Knox. He organized talks between Virginia and Maryland over the Potomac River. He also approved of the meeting at Annapolis between several of the states. Because of his earlier resignation, these calls were given extra credit in the minds of the people who heard about them. Congress finally agreed with Washington, following Shays’ Rebellion, and called for delegates to be chosen for a convention in Philadelphia to make revisions to the Articles of Confederation.32 It was with great anguish that Washington agreed to go to Philadelphia. Though he hoped that something good would come of the meeting, he also worried about publicly staking his much-cherished honor on something that might fail. He feared that the delegates might overstep their congressional mandate and thus make the convention illegal, losing the chance at reform, which, as Madison pointed out, was exactly why he was needed there. In the end, Washington was swayed by Madison’s reasoning and agreed to go. He felt that the fate of the nation depended on his being there.33 By the time that he was elected chair of the Constitutional Convention, on May 25, 1787, he knew what his legacy would be. He was the obvious choice for the chief executive, if there was going to be one. Few would trust the powers that the convention was about to bestow upon the central government to anyone but him. No one there thought otherwise. Even though his future role was taken for granted by the delegates, more time was spent debating the executive branch in the Constitutional Convention

44

George Washington

than on anything else. Still so fearful of executives were the republicanminded delegates, that all they were able to accomplish was a sketch of powers, responsibilities, and duties that Washington would have to bring to life. He would decide how the President should act. Everything he did, every move he made, would be considered precedent by latter Presidents. Washington realized this from the moment the convention ended on September 17, 1787. After a delegate dinner, he wrote in his diary that “[I] retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed.” The trust that his fellow delegates had placed in him was the result of the model.34 Despite this, part of Washington still hoped he would be allowed to return home once the Constitution was ratified. At the same time, he also knew that it would be ratified, in large part, because of the unspoken assumption that he would lead the first government. He was forced to accept the fact that the model required him to see to it that the danger was extinct, not that it was simply on the road to extinction. He accepted the outcome of the election, comparing himself to “a culprit who is being led to his execution,” as he made his way to New York. He arrived with a heavy heart but clean hands. He would go on to fulfill the hopes of those who had written the Constitution and destroy the fears of those who had opposed it. By accepting the results of the first Constitutional election, Washington completed his “model” transformation. He fused his destiny with that of America’s, just as both Cincinnatus and Cato had done in Rome. By doing this, he gave up his desire to be his own person entirely. He had become the living embodiment of America. He was the glue that held the states together in both war and peace.35 Washington was sworn in as President of the United States on April 30, 1789, for what he hoped to be a single term. He ended up serving two, because the problems the nation faced were too great to be banished in four years. At his First Inaugural, he said, “I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love.” He had a talent for picking bright men who could get the job done. He did have to work around the near-constant infighting between his Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, and his Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. He was able to keep the government running despite this because he was a good manager of men. Washington stayed on for a second term only because he became convinced that disunion sentiment would reemerge if he left office in 1793.36 One of his greatest crises as president was in response to “Citizen Genet” during the French Revolution. There was never any love lost between Washington and the French. With the exception of the Marquis de Lafayette, whom he considered a son, he never doubted that France had joined the American cause not because of shared republican ideals, but out of its own self-interest, to see England weakened. He had been suspicious of the

Washington as Cincinnatus

45

French Revolution from the outset and believed that the Revolutionary government was trying to use America against Great Britain. Washington knew that the young nation could ill afford another war with its former motherland, which was something that Jefferson did not understand. Washington understood both superpowers intimately, having served with the armies of both during his life, and knew what they thought and how they acted. Because of this knowledge, Washington kept the nation neutral, allowing it to grow into the role that the Declaration and Constitution had destined for it.37 When he at last came home, convinced that the nation would be better served by someone else after 1796, he was happy, though tired. Both Jefferson and Hamilton wanted to succeed him, but the honor fell to John Adams instead. Adams resented Washington’s popularity and was concerned that the Virginian would attempt to run a shadow government and have a third term through him. The second president lacked Washington’s dignity. Their relationship was not helped when Adams had to call Washington back into service when war with France threatened. Because of his fears, Adams soon sought peace with France. Washington happily returned to his retirement, the remainder of which was spent entertaining friends and working on his farms. He was out riding, checking his property, when he got ill and died in December of 1799.38 Washington’s contemporaries remembered him as a force for union, peace, and harmony. He was the man who had won the nation its independence and guided its first constitutional government. In the famous words of Light Horse Harry Lee, “[h]e was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Other men could have led the nation, in both war and peace, but only Washington could unite them into a nation. He brought out the best in others and his leadership in both areas was effortless and natural.39 Americans two centuries later remember him in much the same way. And yet, they tend to forget the model that made the man. He was a success in everything that he set out to do in his life. He became a gentleman, had a family, won independence for his country, protected the liberty of independence for posterity, and then went home to die in his own bed. All this he owed to his adherence to the model. His problems, such as the debacle at Fort Necessity, came when he turned from it and sought honor on his own.40 His personal impressiveness rubbed off on the office and every future chief executive has studied his example. Russell Kirk said that Washington “set the presidential standard high.” Some of his successors have taken their study more to heart than others. His self-enforced retirement after serving two terms was not broken until 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt violated it. In the 1950s, “Washington’s Amendment,” as it might have been called, was added to the Constitution to ensure that all future presidents would

46

George Washington

adhere to the first’s principle. It was hardly a partisan measure, because of America’s love for Washington and for the tradition he had established.41 But his genius lay in something other than the precedents he set. During the time Washington spent adhered to the model, he never tried to usurp the authorities that had invested him with power. He understood and deeply respected the concept of republicanism, even if he was not a theorist. He also understood military power, though he was not a great general. He truly could have been king if he had wanted it, though he was not a superior politician. Increasingly today, however, few presidents exhibit his character or adherence to ideas. Too often in the modern world, policy is driven by polls rather than ideas. If Washington had listened to the polls; the nation would have joined France’s bloody revolution, only to have withdrawn when the guillotine was put into use. Presidents today often seem more concerned with what their legacy will be, rather than what is best for the country that they serve.42 Perhaps it is old fashioned, in the Media Age, to wish that a president could be anything like Washington. His way was grounded in a belief that America had a special role to play in the world, something that is often missing today. In Washington’s case, that belief was further grounded in the Cincinnatus model of putting country before self. There is much to be said for the Cincinnatus comparison; after all, Washington looked and behaved like a classical hero. His critics have often been intellectuals, both in his own time and in the present, who could not understand how he could be so popular, while not being as “enlightened” as they suppose themselves to be. Hero worship might seem elitist, but so is decrying it. America today would do well to seek more Washington-style heroes and less Washingtonbeltway rhetoric.43 NOTES 1. Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (New York: Doubleday, 1984), p. xix. 2. Historian Gordon Wood has called Washington “the perfect Cincinnatus.” See Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 205. The author’s paper is more in the vein of Wood than Wills, though both are essentially correct in their assessments of Washington. 3. These other two models will be discussed here, but only as they furthered to nurture the Cincinnatus model in Washington. 4. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 214; Wood, Radicalism, p. 197. Washington was compared to Cincinnatus in 1779, by Maryland poet Charles H. Wharton, by Europeans in 1783, and during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 by William Pierce of Georgia. All came over a decade before Mason Weems and a generation before Lord Byron both used the story as a literary device. See Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), p. 16; Richard Brookhiser, Founding

Washington as Cincinnatus

47

Father (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 59; Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1962). 5. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 1732–1775 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), pp. 18, 315–318: Wood, Radicalism, pp. 198–199; Robert F. Jones, George Washington (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), p. 15. The fact that he did not attend college, as so many of his future contemporaries did, was a source of personal pain for Washington. He once commented of his “consciousness of a defective education.” Historian Forrest McDonald thinks Washington was little more than a man who played a role for at least the last third of his lifetime. See, Forrest McDonald, E Pluribus Unum (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979), p. 262. 6. Flexner, Forge, pp. 17, 28, 30; Charles C. Wall, George Washington: Citizen-Soldier (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980), p. 6; Brookhiser, Father, p. 127. Jones backs the author’s assessment of Washington as being “controlled” by a model, but uses the Rules of Civility and Order (which George learned so that he would “fit in” around the Fairfaxes) instead of either Cincinnatus or Joseph Addison’s Cato, as some other historians have. 7. Bliss Isely, The Horseman of the Shenandoah (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1962), p. 9; Flexner, Forge, pp. 14, 51; Wall, Citizen, p. 5; W. E. Woodward, George Washington: The Image and the Man (New York: Live Right, 1946), p. 43. 8. For example, in the play, Cato says, “’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.” For more on Addison’s Cato, see Flexner, Forge, pp. 50–51. 9. W. W. Abbot, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, Volume 1, 1748–August 1755 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), pp. 58, 60; Flexner, Forge, p. 55; Woodward, Image, p. 69; Cunliffe, Monument, p. 56; Jones, Washington, p. 44; W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), p. 162. The Ohio Company was a cartel of Virginian land speculators who worked to advance the colony’s claim to western lands. All the prominent families of Virginia were members, including the Lees, Fairfaxes, Masons, and Washingtons. Interestingly, the Royal Commission was the one thing that Washington sought in his early military period and it was the one thing that was denied him. 10. Donald Jackson, editor, The Diaries of George Washington: Volume 1, 1748–1765 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), p. 155; Flexner, Forge, pp. 71–75. 11. Abbot, Colonial 1, p. 73; Jackson, Diaries 1, p. 164; Noemic Emery, Washington: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), p. 60; Flexner, Forge, p. 81; Eccles, Canadian, pp. 162–163. 12. Abbot, Colonial 1, pp. 117, 165; Jackson, Diaries 1, pp. 132, 195, 201; Flexner, Forge, p. 90; Isely, Horseman, p. 71; Eccles, Canadian, p. 164. On November 22, 1753 Washington had written in his diary that “a fort at the forks would be equally well situated on Ohio and have the entire command of Monongahela.” The French believed the same thing. Their fort construction team had left Fort Le Boeuf roughly the same time Washington had the previous winter. A question that remains about the French diplomatic mission to Washington is that if they were ambassadors, as Washington had been to Fort Le Boeuf, why did they lurk

48

George Washington

in the woods for several days around Washington’s position without making themselves known to him? 13. Abbot, Colonial 1, pp. 118, 159; Brookhiser, Father, p. 23; Flexner, Forge, p. 109; Eccles, Canadian, p. 165. George wrote the “bullets” letter on May 31, 1754 to his brother John Augustine. His report on the capitulation of the fort was written on July 19. 14. Abbot, Colonial 1, pp. 198, 206; Emery, Washington, p. 67; Flexner, Forge, pp. 111, 113. Washington wrote to Dinwiddie in August of 1754, concerning the matter of raising troops, “What men we can, we do enlist; but to send officers into different parts for that purpose, would be unavailing, as they neither have money, nor can get any.” The governor replied on September 11, laying the blame on the Burgesses, saying, “No doubt you have heard that our Assembly is prorogu’d without granting any supplies.” Regardless of what he said in public, Dinwiddie was having second thoughts about allowing Washington to remain in command of Virginia’s forces, because of Fort Necessity. Also, the British Army was attempting to integrate their regulars with the colonial forces. It was decided that the highest rank a colonial could hold was that of major. This gave Washington an excuse to resign and let Dinwiddie off the hook of having to fire Virginia’s hero. 15. Abbot, Colonial 1, pp. 241, 271; Paul Lucas, American Odyssey (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984), p. 139. 16. Woodward, Image, p. 69; Eccles, Canadian, p. 168. 17. Abbot, Colonial 1, p. 329; Isely, Horseman, p. 164; Emery, Washington, p. 84; Flexner, Forge, p. 126. 18. Flexner, Forge, pp. 128–131; Eccles, Canadian, p. 171. 19. Abbot, Colonial 1, p. 339; W. W. Abbot, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, Volume 5, October 1757–September 1758 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), pp. 33, 167, 170, 175, 224; Flexner, Forge, pp. 138, 149, 211; Cunliffe, Monument, p. 51; Emery, Washington, pp. 84, 93, 114. George was on hand when the English marched on and took Fort Duquesne in October and November of 1758, but resented the fact that the English had attacked from the north rather than from Virginia. For more on this, see Abbot, Colonial 5, pp. 353–360 and W. W. Abbot, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, Volume 6, September 1758–December 1760 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), pp. 158–160. 20. Abbot, Colonial 6, pp. 10–13, 175–181, 186–187, 192, 317, 322; Flexner, Forge, pp. 223, 234; Woodward, Image, p. 93. George received Mount Vernon from Lawrence’s estate, after the latter’s daughter died in childhood. 21. Jackson, Diaries 1, p. 211; Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, editors, The Diaries of George Washington: Volume 3, 1771–1775, 1780–1781 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), p. 94; Flexner, Forge, pp. 249, 289; Woodward, Image, p. 216. 22. Flexner, Forge, pp. 279–281; Wall, Citizen, p. 30. 23. Jackson and Twohig, Diaries 3, pp. 261, 303; Beverly H. Runge, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, Volume 10, March 1774–June 1775 (Charlotesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), pp. 102, 119–127, 236; Emery, Washington, p. 165; Flexner, Forge, pp. 315, 322; Woodward, Image, p. 225. 24. Jackson and Twohig, Diaries 3, pp. 267–268, 275; Runge, Colonial 10, pp. 109–110, 128–131, 154–156, 174, 367–368; Flexner, Forge, p. 322; Cunliffe,

Washington as Cincinnatus

49

Monument, p. 74; James Thomas Flexner, George Washington in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), p. 10; Wall, Citizen, p. 39. Jefferson’s prominence may not be as well deserved. Much of the work that Jefferson was proudest of was often the result of the work of George Mason and others, especially in the period 1775–1776. See Pauline Maier, American Scripture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). 25. Jackson and Twohig, Diaries 3, pp. 314–316, 327–329; Philander D. Chase, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series, Volume 1, June–September 1775 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), pp. 3, 15; Flexner, Forge, pp. 334, 334; Emery, Washington, p. 14; Wall, Citizen, p. 45. While it is true that Washington wore his uniform at the Second Continental Congress, it is also true that he was one of the few colonials with any appreciable military experience. 26. Chase, Revolution 1, p. 1; Flexner, Revolution, pp. 41, 46; Cunliffe, Monument, pp. 92–93; Emery, Washington, p. 177. Upon hearing of Washington’s appointment as general and his refusal to take a salary, Horace Walpole said, “If these folks will imitate both the Romans and Cromwellians in self-denial and enthusiasm, we shall be horribly plagued.” Washington would repeat the gesture when he became President as well. 27. McDonald, E Pluribus, p. 42; Edmund S. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1977), pp. 6–10; Flexner, Revolution, pp. 14, 32; Cunliffe, Monument, p. 99. General Nathaniel Greene epitomized Washington’s Fabian tactics in the Revolution’s Southern Campaign. 28. Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 79. This assessment of Congress may not seem entirely fair. In their defense, they were trying to build a government from scratch, fund a war that was often going badly for the colonies/states, and seek international recognition for what they were doing. They were hampered by the colonies/states, who were just as republican-minded as they were, and were just as reluctant as they were, when it came to Washington’s requests, to give up more power and authority. And yet, it is on their shoulders that the blame must eventually fall, because it was their responsibility to make the states understand that they were fighting a war for their collective futures. At the same time, it also offers a unique insight into the founding of the United States. Americans, since 1776, have put a premium on ideas, even if adherence is at times seemingly unpractical. In dire times, Congress would offer near-dictatorial powers to Washington, which he always refused, even though acceptance could have brought the needed supplies and troops into camp. His adherence to ideas was even stronger than theirs. 29. Wall, Citizen, p. 140; McDonald, E Pluribus, p. 43. 30. McDonald, E Pluribus, pp. 65–66; Flexner, Revolution, p. 227; Brookhiser, Father, p. 44. During the threatened officers’ mutiny of 1783, Washington arrived at the meeting prepared to address his officers by reason and patriotism. As he started to read a letter from Congress, he found that he had to reach for his reading glasses. He apologized, saying, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” This single sentence moved the men to tears and left the mutiny in shambles. 31. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, editors, The Diaries of George Wash-

50

George Washington

ington: Volume 4, 1784–June 1786 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), p. 1; W. W. Abbot, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series, Volume 3, May 1785–March 1786 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), p. 61; Emery, Washington, p. 285; Wood, Radicalism, pp. 205– 206; Wills, Cincinnatus, pp. 4, 18. 32. W. W. Abbot, editor, The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series, Volume 4, April 1786–January 1787 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), pp. 108, 130, 183, 212, 299, 331, 460, 470, 481, 518; Morgan, Birth, p. 123; Emery, Washington, pp. 289, 299; Jones, Washington, p. 101; Cunliffe, Monument, p. 139; Wills, Cincinnatus p. 4. Most notably, Congress lacked the power to tax under the Articles of Confederation. They had to rely on the states for what amounted to voluntary contributions. Shays’ rebellion was a direct result of the poor performance of Congress in collecting money (most of the men revolting were being threatened with debtors’ prison because they had run up debts while serving in the war and had never been paid) and in enforcing the law of the land. 33. Abbot, Confederation 4, pp. 344, 382, 448, 471, 502, 523, 526; Wood, Radicalism, p. 208; Brookhiser, Father, p. 56. Washington’s general disinterest in becoming involved was still firm even after he had agreed to go. Rather then spend time preparing for the convention, as some of his fellow Virginians did, Washington visited his farms on his normal circuit, as if nothing was about to happen. See Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, editors, The Diaries of George Washington: Volume 5, July 1786–December 1789 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979). 34. Jackson and Twohig, Diaries 5, pp. 162–164, 185; Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of George Washington (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1974), p. 3; Jones, Washington, p. 88; Brookhiser, Father, pp. 60, 76; McDonald, E Pluribus, pp. 270–279, 354. 35. Jackson and Twohig, Diaries 5, pp. 296, 351, 440, 445; W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, editors, The Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series, Volume 1, September 1788–March 1789 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987), p. 225; Woodward, Image, p. 376; Emery, Washington, p. 47; Cunliffe, Monument, pp. 152, 201. Addison’s Cato remarks in the play: “My life is grafted to the fate of Rome.” James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson, as cited in Wood, Radicalism, p. 209. “Be assured his [Washington’s] influence carried this government.” 36. McDonald, Presidency, pp. 39, 96; William J. Bennet, editor, Our Sacred Honor (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1997), p. 92; Jones, Washington, p. 106. 37. McDonald, Presidency, p. 129; Flexner, Revolution, p. 326; Wills, Cincinnatus, pp. 91–94; Cunliffe, Monument, pp. 176–178. 38. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, editors, The Diaries of George Washington: Volume 6, January 1790–December 1799 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979); Emery, Washington, pp. 355–367; McDonald, Presidency, p. 93; Woodward, Image, p. 387. 39. Jones, Washington, p. 160; Wills, Cincinnatus, p. 106; Flexner, Revolution, p. 551. 40. Gary Wills, “George Washington and ‘The Guilty, Dangerous, and Vulgar Honor,’ ” American Heritage (February/March 1980), pp. 4–11.

Washington as Cincinnatus

51

41. Woodward, Image, p. 437; Russel Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Washington, D.C.: Regenery Gateway, 1991), p. 450. 42. Wills, Cincinnatus, p. 18; Morgan, Genius, p. 6. 43. Wills, Cincinnatus, p. 109; Cunliffe, Monument, pp. 196–198.

4 George Washington: Can Aristotle Recapture What His Countrymen Have Forgotten? Colleen J. Shogan

If Washington’s contemporaries were too willing to be awed, we are not willing enough.

This sentence is an excerpt from Richard Brookhiser’s recent biography of George Washington entitled Founding Father. It is an appropriate beginning of this discussion because it immediately suggests several assumptions that this analysis must consider. First, it assumes that Washington was an awe-inspiring statesman who had the ability not only to affect the American people, but also his contemporary peers. Second, this sentence implies that Americans of the Founding era embraced Washington’s formidable aweinspiring status; his extraordinary character was appreciated and revered. Most importantly, we are reminded that politics has changed since the Founding era. Late-twentieth-century Americans have difficulty believing that a man of Washington’s eminence actually existed, participated in politics, and greatly affected the tide of history.1 An anecdote featured in Founding Father corroborates this statement. A ninth-grader from Long Island, interviewed about Washington after Nixon’s funeral, responded, “Washington didn’t do something big, it’s just that he was first.”2 It is puzzling that today’s Americans diminish our first President when he was almost deified in the Founding era. Even if Americans allow themselves to believe that such an extraordinary

54

George Washington

man existed, they doubt that Washington would survive in present-day politics. A 1997 cartoon drawn by Steve Kelley of the San Diego UnionTribune depicts Washington alongside President Bill Clinton. Washington states, “I cannot tell a lie.” Clinton responds to Washington’s statement, “Amateur.” The message is clear from this cartoon. Americans believe that politics is an arena devoid of eminent character and morality. We are happy when political figures fulfill low levels of ethical behavior; if they obey the proverbial “thou shall nots,” we believe they are “moral leaders.”3 An elected official whose morality transcends this elementary understanding of virtue is rare; Americans certainly do not expect such eminence in politics. Today’s political figures are reduced to objects of derision, contempt, and questioning (perhaps rightfully so). In particular, the office of the presidency has fallen upon difficult times. At this time of policy battles and cunning games of cat-and-mouse, Americans seem to have lost the ideal of a republican executive who is beyond the pettiness of political squabbling. This discussion will suggest that political scientists should return to a study of Washington’s leadership, not simply as a policy innovator or referee between competing political factions, but as an example of eminent republican leadership at its best. This analysis will isolate specific characteristics of Washington’s persona to attempt to uncover these elusive components of political greatness. This examination of Washington’s character will use Aristotle’s discussion of the great-souled man in his Nicomachean Ethics as a point of reference. A reader might wonder, “Why Aristotle?” If Washington was a product of any era of the history of Western political philosophy, he was more likely influenced by the likes of Locke, Hobbes, and Montesquieu. This chapter does not argue that Washington’s laudable actions or words should be directly attributed to the teachings of Aristotle, or any other philosopher, for that matter. It does argue that Aristotle’s serious treatment of the idea of a “great-souled man” helps students of political science understand the importance of Washington’s eminent character. Specifically, Aristotle’s discussion of ambition and honor is particularly helpful. Scholars of executive power must ask themselves, “What specific characteristics made Washington awe-inspiring?” Aristotle’s discussion of the great-souled man in the Ethics isolates those special characteristics for us. Understanding the extraordinary characteristics of Aristotle’s great-souled man will help us pinpoint the plausible components of Washington’s greatness. In this regard, using Aristotle as a framework is effective because intangible ideals such as “eminent political leadership” are often recognizable, but difficult to grasp conceptually. Aristotle’s text will make this analysis of Washington’s character more focused and precise. In short, the discussion of Aristotle will outline the important components of eminent political leadership

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

55

and the example of Washington will show how such characteristics can actually affect the formation of a new regime. Even more importantly, this examination will demonstrate that in order to understand Washington, a return to Aristotle is not only helpful, but also necessary. Washington is an enigma to us today because we have lost touch with the classic magnanimity he illuminates. One way of rediscovering the greatness of Washington is to return to Aristotle’s presentation of the great-souled man. Aristotle may be closer to the essence of Washington than Americans as democrats are today. Instead of placing Washington into the context of today’s politics or studying his role in the Founding era, we must look behind Washington to Aristotle to explicate his worth. The final section of this chapter provides a possible theoretical construct that will explain why such a return to Aristotle is needed to understand the virtue of George Washington. GEORGE WASHINGTON AND ARISTOTLE’S GREAT-SOULED MAN The term “great-souled man” originates from the Greek word megalopsychia, which means literally “greatness of soul.” Megalopsychia was translated into Latin as the word magnanimitas and later became the English word “magnanimity.”4 Transferred into more contemporary terms, the great-souled man in Aristotle’s Ethics can be described as a gentleman who possesses a grandeur of soul.5 Regardless of what term is used to describe him, the great-souled man of Book IV is rare and exceptional. Aristotle describes the great-souled man as one who “deserves the most” because he is the “best of men.” The virtue of greatness of soul is a “crowning ornament of the virtues” that enhances each of the virtues. The great-souled man is indeed very rare; hence, with regard to the rest of society, the greatsouled man is truly an “extreme.”6 The great-souled man’s existence is an extreme; his station in life is quite exceptional. Because of his overall mastery of moral virtue, his deeds reflect the worth of his soul. Ironically, the exceptional nature of the great-souled man is achieved by his ability to “reach the mean” with respect to all the virtues. The great-souled man performs amazing acts of execution, but because his soul corresponds fittingly to his actions, “by reason of rightness” he stands at the “mean point.” Washington’s exemplary character matches his impressive list of deeds. His public station in life reflected his well-ordered soul. The majesty that surrounded Washington is reminiscent of Aristotle’s great-souled man. It is difficult to depict the intense admirations bordering on adoration, that surrounded George Washington in the late eighteenth century. After Washington captured Princeton and Trenton during the Revolutionary War, Robert Morris averred, “He is the greatest man on earth.”7 When Wash-

56

George Washington

ington died, Representative John Marshall gave an oration in his memory, proclaiming, “Our Washington is no more! The hero lives now only in great actions.” Additionally, the House of Representatives passed a resolution upon his death that pronounced Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of countrymen.”8 Even Washington’s ideological and political opponents agreed that Washington’s character was noteworthy; Thomas Jefferson wrote to Dr. Walter Jones in January of 1814 that Washington, in every sense of the words, was “a wise, a good, and a great man.” In an 1803 letter, Jefferson commented that Washington’s “moderation of desires and strength of judgment” enabled his great leadership.9 The main characteristic of the great-souled man is twofold: he claims much and deserves much. In other words, the great-souled man possesses a high level of self-awareness. This quality of self-awareness connects the great-souled man with politics and the idea of honor, or time. Honor is a manifestation of virtue that facilitates the self-awareness of the great-souled man. It is important to elucidate what purpose honor does not serve for the great-souled man. Douglas Adair explains: “the concept of honor, like the concept of glory, is both the goal of character formation and an instrument of social control, building into the heart and mind of an individual a powerful sense of socially expected conduct, a pattern of behavior calculated to win praise from his contemporaries who are his social equals or superiors.”10 Adair implies that honor motivates individuals to act well. Aristotle’s depiction of the great-souled man is different. The extraordinary nature of the great-souled man emerges before his desire for honor. The great-souled man seeks honors to confirm his noble nature, implying that his virtue existed before and independent of his desire for honor. Politics is the arena in which such honors are typically conferred. The great-souled man is probably not interested in day-to-day political life, but he “will face danger in a great cause.”11 In other words, the great-souled man becomes a man of action in times of conflict, such as wars and the foundings of new political communities. The great-souled man enters politics to receive honors so that he may confirm his own belief of his outstanding virtue. This understanding of the great-souled man’s motive explains the ambiguous passage of Book IV, Section 3 that discusses his relationship to honor. Aristotle states, “Honor and dishonor then are the objects with which the great-souled man is especially concerned.”12 This is not a surprising statement. However, a few sentences later in this section, Aristotle seemingly contradicts his earlier assertion when he writes, “For he [the great-souled man] does not care much even about honor, which is the greatest of external goods.”13 A reader is left confused—is the great-souled man concerned or not concerned about honor? Understanding the motive of the great-souled man solves this puzzle. It seems that the great-souled man wants to confirm his belief in

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

57

his own virtue, but does not care much about honor in itself. Instead, political honor serves as a means to a higher end. Was Washington concerned with honor in the same manner as the greatsouled man? The way in which a political elite approaches the idea of honor is pertinent. If a person uses honor as an indicator of his own virtue and not for self-aggrandizement or personal exultation, then we recognize the extraordinary nature of this individual. Thus, analyzing Washington’s opinion of honor helps determine the depth of his soul. No doubt, Washington was concerned with the idea of honor. When Washington accepted the generalship of the colonial forces, he wrote a letter to his wife, Martha Washington, on June 18, 1775. He provided her with two reasons for accepting. First, his acceptance was a “kind of destiny,” which he hoped was “designed to answer some good purpose.” Second, he wrote, “It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment, without exposing my character to such censures, as would have reflected dishonor upon myself.”14 Washington was moved by an extraordinary sense of duty. He did not simply accept the appointment because he wanted to fulfill his unbridled ambition; Washington believed in the revolutionary cause and relied upon his personal sense of honor to guide his decision. Correspondences of Washington indicate that he doubted his ability to lead the Continental Army. On June 16, 1775, Washington wrote to the President of the Continental Congress: “Tho’ I am truly sensible of the high Honor done me in this Appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and Military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust: However, as the congress desires I will enter upon the momentous duty . . . I do not think my self equal to the Command I am honored with.”15 Washington may have been unsure about his qualifications as general, but he realized that his sense of duty required him to risk his reputation for a greater cause. Undoubtedly, Washington’s high esteem for the idea of honor facilitated this decision. Washington valued the opinions of the members of the Continental Congress. Although Washington might have thought he was not suited for this arduous appointment, he did realize he was the best available man for the job. Taking his cue from the honor bestowed upon him, Washington dutifully accepted the generalship. Washington’s acceptance of this post is one example of honor affecting a leader’s decisions. But what were Washington’s opinions concerning honor? How does honor arise in a human being? What is the proper role for honor in extraordinary political times? In a January 1, 1776, statement of General Orders addressed to the Continental Army, Washington hinted at the origins of honor: “Men who with pleasure it is observed, are addicted to fewer Vices than are commonly found in Armies; but it is Subordination and Discipline (the Life and Soul of an Army) which next under providence, is to make us formidable to our enemies, honorable in ourselves, and re-

58

George Washington

spected in the world.”16 Washington’s statement concerns honor with specific reference to military men, but the thrust of his argument is worth noting: subordination, discipline, and providence make individuals honorable. Some men may always lack honors because of the role of providence, but Washington’s inclusion of subordination and discipline indicates that personal choice is a powerful ingredient. In addition, Washington’s conception of honor is quite introspective. Subordination, discipline, and providence make individuals “formidable” to enemies but “honorable” to themselves. This is an important distinction because it implies that Washington believed the origin of honor is private, not public. Before a citizen can expect honors from others, he must become honorable in his own eyes. In this sense, the public granting of honors represents a confirmation of already recognized virtue or excellence. This idea is reminiscent of the great-souled man’s approach to honor. Recall that Aristotle’s great-souled man regards honors as a confirmation of his already existing outstanding virtue. However, Washington did not think that individuals could achieve exemplary personal character without reasonable support. In a September 24, 1776 letter to the President of Congress, Washington wrote that providing good pay to the officers in the army is necessary because such adequate support “will induce Gentlemen, and Men of Character to engage.” Furthermore, he stated, “Till the bulk of your Officers are composed of such persons as actuated by Principles of honor, and a spirit of enterprize, you have little to expect from them.”17 Hence, we can make the following conclusions about Washington’s opinion of honor. In political (in this case, specifically military) endeavors, men who are attentive to the notion of honor are needed. To achieve this high level of character, individuals must be provided with certain benefits. These inducements are provided because human nature is not perfect. Although excellence in moral virtue is rewarding in itself, gentle “encouragement” is often needed to achieve desired results. This is where the importance of the political sphere enters the picture. Note that Washington directed his letter to the President of Congress; he wanted to persuade Congress that adequate support must be provided for men of high character to become officers in the army. Good political leadership that stems from moral excellence will flourish when the political community supports it in some direct or indirect manner. The Continental Congress did not legislate moral criteria for the officers of the colonial army, but providing adequate support for high military posts subtly encourages such desired results. Interestingly enough, Washington’s approach is quite Aristotelian because he recognized that to achieve excellence, potentially virtuous citizens need support from astute political decision making and carefully crafted legislation. In Book X, Section 9 Aristotle states:

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

59

If, as has been said, in order to be good a man must have been properly educated and trained, and must subsequently continue to follow virtuous habits of life, and to do nothing base whether voluntarily or involuntarily, then this will be secured if men’s lives are regulated by a certain intelligence, and by a right system, invested with adequate sanctions.18

At the end of the Ethics, Aristotle informs us that we must progress to the study of politics. Because the idea of the good is not enough to promote moral excellence, it is necessary to turn to the science of legislation, which will aid in the formation of noble character. We can conclude from the preceding evidence that neither George Washington nor the great-souled man is a “lover” of honor. Instead, they rightly claim honors that are bestowed upon them. There is a major difference between claiming honors and loving them. For Washington and the greatsouled man, the primary purpose of political activity is not the receipt of honors or glory. The great-souled man’s actions contribute to the common good, although his contribution is not readily apparent from a cursory reading of the Ethics. Since the actions of the great-souled man are executed within the political sphere, it is evident that his efforts do not benefit himself alone. The “noble enterprises” of the great-souled man involve the “shouldering of some great responsibility” that directly fosters the common good.19 Paul Eidelberg captures this concept succinctly; he comments, “promoting the public good is the articulation of the self.”20 Washington’s actions were not primarily motivated by his desire for honors. While Washington’s sense of duty might be more pronounced than the greatsouled man’s obligation to the common good, the similarity between the two regarding their subordination of honors is quite striking and illuminating. Another strong comparison concerns the idea of laudable ambition. Washington subordinated his personal ambition and concern with honors to serve a greater cause, notably the establishment of a large democratic republic. The definition of the nebulous mean of ambition is difficult to ascertain, but it can be achieved according to Aristotle: “Now men do seek honor both more and less than is right; it must therefore be possible to do so rightly. It is therefore this nameless middle disposition in regard to honor that we really praise. Compared with ambition it appears unambitiousness, and compared with unambitiousness it appears ambition.”21 This description reminds us of Washington to a great extent; although Washington displayed vigor and ambition in his many exploits, we do not remember him as an ambitious man. In this sense, Washington fulfills this mean. In fact, Washington was acutely aware of the dangers of voracious ambition. In his First Inaugural Address, he had these words of advice for Americans: The people of this Country may doubtless enjoy all the great blessings of the social State: and yet United America may not for a long time to come make a brilliant

60

George Washington

figure as a nation, among the nations of the earth. Should this be the case, and should the people be actuated by principles of true magnanimity, they will not suffer their ambition to be awakened. They should guard against ambition as against their greatest enemy. We should not, in imitation of some nations which have been celebrated for a false kind of patriotism, wish to aggrandize our own Republic at the expense of the freedom and happiness of the rest of mankind.22

Washington’s subordination of personal ambition was significant because it prevented the United States from becoming a monarchy, but it also served as an example for citizens. Washington as a paradigm showed citizens that self-government begins with the proper governing of the soul. It would be foolish to claim that Washington possessed no personal ambition at all; it is almost impossible to envision that an individual could lead a revolution and establish a nation’s new government without some degree of ambition. Instead of measuring the amount of ambition Washington possessed, perhaps it is more fruitful to examine how he directed his ambition. Did Washington’s ambition serve his own good, or did it serve some higher cause? An examination of Washington’s correspondence surrounding his acceptance of the presidential office will highlight this discussion of personal ambition. In a September 22, 1788 letter to Henry Lee, Washington wrote: Might I not . . . be chargeable with levity and inconsistency; if not with rashness and ambition? Nay farther would there not even be some apparent foundation for the two former charges? Though I prize, as I ought, the good opinion of my fellow citizens; yet, if I know myself, I would not seek or retain popularity at the expense of one social duty or moral virtue.23

Washington valued his reputation, but he also believed that the subordination of ambition was a moral virtue. If the decision of accepting the presidency relied solely upon the question of his popularity, Washington refused to go against his belief in this virtue.24 With charges of excessive ambition facing Washington, the obvious question remains: why did he decide to accept the presidential office? If the decision to accept or deny hinged on his considerations of popularity, it is evident from the letter to Lee that Washington would have declined the office. Knowing that Washington did accept indicates that some other determining factor must have affected his final decision. An examination of Washington’s letters shows that he accepted the office quite simply because he did not want to fail to do something he felt he must do. This sentiment is corroborated in his October 3, 1788 letter to Alexander Hamilton: The acceptance would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance than I ever experienced before in my life. It would be, however, with a fixed and sole deter-

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

61

mination of lending whatever assistance might be in my power to promote the public weal, in hopes that a convenient and early period my services might be dispensed with, and that I might be permitted once more to retire.25

In short, Washington believed that the young American government could not properly function without his leadership. However, we can observe his subordination of ambition in this passage; once the new government established itself on solid ground, Washington favored retirement. The origin of Washington’s great sense of duty was the routine subordination of his own desires to the needs of the nation. In his biography of George Washington, John Marshall stated: “If Washington possessed ambition, that passion was, in his bosom, so regulated by principles . . . he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction that the interests of his country should be promoted.”26 Marshall wondered if Washington possessed ambition at all. Marshall’s confusion about the presence of ambition in the mature Washington might stem from the idea that laudable ambition, when achieved by a leader, is not a characteristic easily measured or observed, but a more elusive moral virtue. Washington’s ambition is reminiscent of the “nebulous mean” described by Aristotle. Why is this virtue of laudable ambition important in this discussion? One might suppose that a new nation needs extremely ambitious leaders, perhaps fueled by the ardent desire to fulfill personal goals and gain immortal fame. Nevertheless, during a precarious time like the founding of a nation, especially a democratic republic, the subordination of ambition in leaders might be necessary. One must look no further than the case of Washington himself to demonstrate this. On May 22, 1782, General Lewis Nicola wrote a letter to Washington, urging him to consider accepting the appointment of King by the army. Washington, the same day, answered Nicola, “If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable.”27 If Washington had possessed more personal ambition, unregulated by his desire to establish a democratic republic, Nicola’s proposition might have been received favorably. It has not been the goal of this discussion to argue that laudable opinions of honor and the subordination of ambition guarantee favorable political results, but the example of Washington demonstrates that these personal characteristics have the potential to dramatically affect political outcomes. In short, moral virtues matter in politics. There are more references to the great-souled man that fit Washington. For example, Aristotle describes the great-souled man as one who is willing to “face danger in a great cause” and even “sacrifice his life.”28 Washington’s military service would seem to qualify him as a great-souled man. Furthermore, the great-souled man will be “idle and slow to act . . . and will not engage in many undertakings, but only in such as are important and distinguished.”29 Washington abided by this axiom; he hardly spoke

62

George Washington

publicly during the entire Constitutional Convention. In a November 10, 1787 letter to Bushrod Washington, he included some words of advice: “The only advice I will offer to you on the occasion (if you have a mind to command the attention of the House) is to speak seldom, but to important Subjects, except such as particularly relate to your Constituents, and in the former case make yourself perfectly master of the Subject.”30 By only choosing to speak when absolutely necessary, Washington received attention when his opinion concerning the issue at hand was crucial and pertinent. This restriction also lifted Washington’s spoken word above everyday discourse, which, in turn, made his infrequent words valued and revered. The fulfillment of moral virtue sometimes teaches us that “less is more.” In the example of rhetoric, Washington’s scarce dialogue contrasts with contemporary political leaders, who frequently offer public statements. Thus far, this discussion has concentrated on stressing the similarities between Washington and Aristotle’s great-souled man. However, there are subtle differences. According to Aristotle’s definition, a great-souled man is thought to be such if “he claims much and deserves much.”31 Washington’s long and varied service to his country demonstrates that he undoubtedly deserved honors. But did Washington really think he deserved great honors? In order for Washington to fit this particular criterion of the greatsouled man, his personal belief in deserving great things needs to match his level of deserving deeds. Washington accepted any worthy honor bestowed upon him. But he probably did not accept these honors because he truly felt he deserved them. Instead, Washington accepted them because it was the only way he could demonstrate that he understood the importance of the honor. In his April 14, 1789 letter to Charles Thomson regarding his election to the Presidential office, Washington wrote, “I can not, I believe, give a greater sensibility of the honor which they have done me than by accepting this appointment.”32 Instead of the United States thanking Washington for his service, Washington thanked his country in his Farewell Address: My feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude wch. I owe to my beloved country, for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal . . . the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts.33

Washington appreciated the honors bestowed on him, but perhaps thought that he could have done more in service to his country or that his actions could have been more useful. Furthermore, Washington did not view the honors given to him as a confirmation of his own noble virtue. Instead, he viewed these honors as a type of constant support, which made his job of

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

63

establishing the democratic republic a successful endeavor. Once again, it must be emphasized that an extraordinary sense of public duty motivated his public actions. In an address to the citizens of Alexandria, Virginia, Washington declared that no “earthy consideration, short of a conviction of duty” could have persuaded him to accept the presidential office.34 The case of Washington shows that when moral virtue directly affects the public sphere, it is indeed awe-inspiring. While the great-souled man’s effect on the public sphere as a political actor is implicit in the Ethics, Washington explicitly shows us how such a man can dramatically alter the course of human history. Washington’s opinion of honor and subordination of ambition make this comparison to Aristotle’s great-souled man quite extraordinary. Aristotle’s description of the great-souled man helps us understand the origins of Washington’s greatness. Washington leaves most Americans wondering why he was considered remarkable, yet Aristotle very succinctly captures Washington’s rare qualities. Therefore, the question must be answered—why are Americans alienated from Washington or classical examples of magnanimity? THE CHASM OF DEMOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM The entire concept of a “great-souled man” is based upon the premise of superiority. Recall the quotation from Aristotle that introduces readers to the great-souled man: “Inasmuch as the great-souled man deserves most, he must be the best of men; for the better a man is the more he deserves, and he that is best deserves most.”35 Because the great-souled man possesses extraordinary qualities, he is a “better man” and deserves more than the average citizen. In classic formulations, virtue is defined as the superiority of the excellent. However, virtue is no longer defined as such in a democracy. Instead, in the democratic age, virtue is the consensus of all.36 In a democracy, the idea of virtue rests upon equality rather than inequality or superiority. The power of egalitarianism prevalent in a democracy frowns upon terms such as “rank” and “honor.” Democratic men are not licentious; they restrain themselves from vice out of respect for their equals, or neighbors. Virtue has become “democratized.” In a democracy, we often lack the vocabulary of distinction. The ideal of equality does not encourage men to excel. Of course, this does not prevent a few individuals from excelling in a democracy. When such people do excel, they are often viewed with a suspicious eye because their passion for distinction appears threatening to the ordinary democrat. Perhaps no theorist better expressed these sentiments than Alexis de Tocqueville. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted that this movement toward equality began over 700 years ago. Hence, the force of egalitarianism is extremely powerful and should not be dismissed lightly. In fact, Tocqueville observed that democrats value equality much more than

64

George Washington

liberty; he argued, “Nothing can satisfy them without equality . . . they would rather perish than lose it.”37 Honors in a democratic society are “less numerous, less precise.” The dictates of democratic honors are “less rigorously obeyed.”38 The conception of honor is more obscured in a democracy because an egalitarian society is composed of parts that are “analogous.”39 This lack of distinction prevents people from agreeing upon who should receive honors from society. Before further theorizing, it is necessary to distinguish between the ideas of “political equality” and “radical egalitarianism.” Political equality is necessary in a democracy. All individuals who are considered citizens must be treated equally under the rubric of law. This type of equality can be traced to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and more deeply, to John Locke. Tocqueville does not criticize political equality in itself, except that the inception of political equality has led to the creation of radical egalitarianism. As Tocqueville might argue, equality often grows in an almost exponential fashion. Radical egalitarianism demands equality in all arenas of life. While political equality does not forget that human beings are fundamentally unequal in many respects, radical egalitarianism demands such results and beliefs. Political equality is fundamental to democracy; radical egalitarianism is not. Bestowing honors becomes difficult in a culture of radical egalitarianism because all types of lives are considered “good” or “excellent.” Individuals are frequently honored in democracies, but they are typically conferred such honors because they “helped others” or perhaps “furthered a cause.” Individuals are rarely lauded because they are superior individuals in themselves. The charitable action is recognized, but superior nature itself is not. One action can be deemed superior to another, but individuals must be treated equally in all respects. This lack of attention to classical honor has consequences for a democratic society. Before democratic equality was the dominant force in political life, honors connected great-souled men to the citizenry. While citizens were incapable of replicating or fully comprehending the extraordinary virtue of their great-souled leaders, honors made such political leaders tangible. Honors allowed citizens to appreciate those who exhibited greatness. Both the rulers and the ruled understood the importance of excellence. However, a society that does not value superiority and honors cannot rely upon such a broad understanding of the importance of excellence. Ironically, if honors disappear from society, the chasm between great political leaders and the citizenry grows. If a great-souled man lives in a democracy, he recognizes this chasm. When a democracy suddenly faces an extraordinary crisis, will the greatsouled man rise to the occasion? As any nation faces difficult times, it needs political leadership. But will such an enlightened statesman rush to the

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

65

rescue in a democracy? Democracies need great-souled men, but do greatsouled men need democracies? Steven B. Smith hints at this problem when he questions, “One must then ask what there is, if anything, to prevent the great-souled man from subverting the law of equality, upon which conventional political morality rests, in order to gain glory for himself?”40 In difficult times, great-souled political leaders must subvert the law of equality to resolve the crisis. In such instances, the great-souled man acts without the constraints of equality inhibiting him. Even if a great-souled man justly subverts the law of equality in extraordinary circumstances, the question remains—will such a distinctive leader rise to the occasion? Tocqueville claims that “no Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, yet hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue every lofty aims.”41 Tocqueville’s pessimism does not eliminate the possibility that at least one such extraordinary individual might exist in a democracy. But will this person desire to “pursue” such “lofty aims,” particularly in a democracy? Honors bestowed by a democracy upon a great-souled man are not satisfying. The great-souled man despises any pandering to public opinion; he takes his cues from other citizens whom he considers morally serious, or spoudaios, individuals. The egalitarianism present in a democracy frustrates the great-souled man because he acts out of a desire to fulfill the noblest motives. How can one solve the tension between great-souled leaders and democracies? Why would such an individual pursue the receipt of democratic honors? Democracies do not offer a great-souled man motivating enticements. The chasm between great-souled leaders and democratic societies will continue to grow as the force of egalitarianism increases. Quite simply, the conception of the great-souled man and the ideal of radical egalitarianism are not strongly compatible. However, a study of Washington elevates our expectations of the possibilities of government by reminding us that democratic politics has the capability of inspiring citizens and elevating them to greatness. For example, Washington’s uneasiness with the honors bestowed upon him is quite significant. This discomfort connects Washington to American citizens today. Welcoming honors is reminiscent of pride, which is considered a sinful trait in contemporary society. As Americans, we can understand Washington’s uneasiness with receiving honors. His discomfort resonates with the sense of equality instilled in all of us. However, Washington is also connected to the classic magnanimity of the great-souled man in a way that we are not. Washington valued honors because he used them as a touchstone for defining his own duties, or realizing what he “must do” as a political leader. He took the idea of fulfilling

66

George Washington

the requirements of moral virtue seriously while contemporary political figures fail to consider these demands. We might envision Washington as a well-balanced scale. While his soul possessed a love of democracy, it also possessed ingredients of classical magnanimity. We must study the example of Washington to discern how he successfully balanced this scale. When contemporary leaders claim they are just “ordinary citizens” fulfilling some sort of “civic duty” by accepting elected office, we must wonder, with Washington in mind, if we can do better. Additionally, a modern version of the great-souled man exists in the political writing of David Hume. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume discusses a more democratic version of the great-souled man. Hume argues that men who are described as “sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, friendly, generous, beneficent” are able to express the “highest merit of human nature.” Hume continues: “Where these amiable qualities are attended with birth and power and eminent abilities, and display themselves in the good government or useful instruction of mankind, they seem even to raise the possessors of them above the rank of human nature, and make them approach in some measure to the divine.”42 Hume’s version of the great-souled man is not as austere or intimidating. He still represents excellence, but appears more interested in the promotion of the general goodwill of society. Hence, democracies need to strive toward emulating the examples presented to us by Washington and Hume. At the beginning of this analysis, we pondered why Americans could no longer conceive of an extraordinary leader like George Washington. Americans doubt that such a man ever existed. He is a mythical figure whom history teachers explain away as an aberration, embellishment, or hyperbole. The story of Washington and the cherry tree is presented as a fable with no historical basis or relevancy. We must ask ourselves the difficult question—why is George Washington no longer first in the hearts of his countrymen? Most Americans will find this alarming warning absurd. After all, tough times in U.S. history have enjoyed extraordinary political leadership. Lincoln saved the Union and Roosevelt led the nation through a world war. History has been kind to Americans. Excellent executive leadership has offered itself when desperately needed. However, the future cannot be predicted. It is difficult to ascertain what type of political leaders we will choose in upcoming decades or even centuries. Americans might take a cue from the story of Athenian democracy, which began its long descent to destruction when egalitarianism grew fervently in the assembly after the death of the extraordinary Pericles. As a regime type, democracy is not inherently flawed, but the growing fervor of radical egalitarianism inhibits excellent political leadership. As Americans, we might not accept the complete teaching of Aristotle, namely his con-

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

67

ception of the best regime detailed in the Politics. However, Aristotle forces us to take another look at our disengagement with Washington. We have increased the ideal of egalitarianism in our political community, but at what price? Losing appreciation for leaders such as George Washington is only the beginning of the story. The inability to believe that a leader’s personal virtue can affect the public sphere is troubling enough today, but it also raises a more serious problem. If our nation faces a crisis in the near future and we, as a democratic people, must find an excellent leader, will Americans choose a citizen who exhibits strong character and resolve, or will they find such an individual mythical or even too “good” to be true? Furthermore, owing to the chasm that continues to grow between democratic people and great political leaders, will such a citizen readily accept the challenge at hand or will excellent statesmanship cease to be at the helm? NOTES I would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance regarding this project: Professor Norma Thompson (Yale University), Professor Robert Faulkner (Boston College), and Professor Robert Scigliano (Boston College). This project was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation. 1. For a comprehensive account of the changing collective memory of George Washington, see Barry Schwartz’s article titled “Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington” in American Sociological Review 56 (1991): pp. 221–236. To explain why opinions of Washington have fallen upon difficult times, Schwartz commented, “The celebration of these [Washington’s] traits affirms an aristocratic ideal—an ideal more suited to the gentleman than to the common man, to an eighteenth-century republic than a modern democracy” (225). 2. Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 9. 3. For a broader discussion on the American conception of morality, see Martin Diamond’s essay “Ethics and Politics” in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Robert H. Horwitz (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), p. 40. Diamond argues that Americans’ contemporary sense of morality has been “narrowed down to a number of prohibitions” that have “universal status.” 4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962), p. 93. 5. Carnes Lord, “Aristotle” in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd Ed., eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 126. 6. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), IV:iii: pp. 14–16 and IV:iii: p. 8. All Nicomachean Ethics page references in this paper will derive from the Rackham translation. 7. Francis Rufus Bellamy, The Private Life of George Washington (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1951), p. 245.

68

George Washington

8. Glenn A. Phelps, George Washington and American Constitutionalism (Wichita: University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 199. 9. Thomas Jefferson, The Jefferson Cyclopedia, Vol. II, ed. John P. Foley (New York: Russell & Russell, 1900), p. 928. 10. Douglas Adair, “Fame and the Founding Fathers,” in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Edmund P. Willis (Bethlehem, Penn.: Moravian College, 1967), p. 33. 11. Aristotle, IV:iii: p. 23. 12. Ibid., IV:iii: p. 17. 13. Ibid., IV:iii: p. 18. 14. George Washington, George Washington: A Collection, ed. W. B. Allen (Indianapolis: The Liberty Fund, 1988), p. 41. 15. Ibid., p. 40. 16. Ibid., p. 56. 17. Ibid., p. 76. 18. Aristotle, X:ix: p. 633. 19. Carson Holloway, “Magnanimity and Christianity,” unpublished paper, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting, April 25, 1998, p. 9. 20. Paul Eidelberg, A Discourse on Statesmanship: The Design and Transformation of the American Polity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 260. 21. Aristotle, IV:iv: p. 5. 22. Washington, Allen edition, p. 455. 23. George Washington, Basic Writings of George Washington, ed. Saxe Commins (New York: Random House, 1948), p. 16. 24. It is important to note that Washington perceived his acceptance of the presidential office as ambitious because he had publicly announced his retirement years earlier. In his December 23, 1783 address to Congress, Washington wrote, “Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take leave of all the employments of public life.” This letter can be found on p. 272 of the W. B. Allen edition of Washington’s writings. 25. Washington, Allen edition, p. 423. 26. John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, Vol. I (Philadelphia: Crissy & Markley and Thomas, Cowperthwait and Company, 1850), p. 447. 27. Washington, Allen edition, p. 203. 28. Aristotle, IV:iii: p. 23. 29. Ibid., IV:iii: p. 27. 30. Washington, Allen edition, p. 374. 31. Aristotle, IV:iii: p. 3. 32. Washington, Commins edition, p. 557. 33. Washington, Allen edition, p. 514. 34. Ibid., p. 436. 35. Aristotle, IV:iii: p. 14. 36. Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1957), p. 52. 37. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), p. 55.

Aristotle and Washington’s Countrymen

69

38. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), p. 238. 39. Ibid., p. 239. 40. Steven B. Smith, “Goodness, Nobility and Virtue in Aristotle’s Political Science,” in Polity 19, (Fall 1986), p. 22. 41. Tocqueville, Vol. II, p. 243. 42. David Hume, Hume’s Ethical Writings, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), p. 29.

5 Duty, Honor, Country: Parallels in the Leadership of George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower Phillip G. Henderson

Americans have a longstanding propensity to reward individuals who have served the nation in time of war with its highest office in time of peace. Nearly half of all American presidents (nineteen of forty-two) have served the nation in the theater of war.1 Of these nineteen, nine attained the rank of general.2 The wartime exploits of many of these nineteen are noteworthy. James Monroe was wounded leading a charge during the Revolutionary War. Andrew Jackson was a prisoner of war during the Revolution before achieving fame at the Battle of New Orleans. William Henry Harrison came to prominence for his bravery in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Zachary Taylor’s reputation was ensconced in the Mexican War of 1846. Rutherford B. Hayes was severely wounded in the Battle of South Mountain during the Civil War. And Ulysses S. Grant presided over the army during the critical final stages of the Civil War. Presidents of the twentieth century may not match, in sheer numbers, the acts of valor of their predecessors, but their wartime experiences are equally memorable. Theodore Roosevelt, a lieutenant colonel in the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, received a commendation for leading a gallant charge on Kettle Hill (adjacent to San Juan Hill) during the SpanishAmerican War. Harry Truman served valiantly as an artillery officer in World War I. John F. Kennedy and George Bush narrowly escaped captivity or, worse yet, death, in World War II. Gerald Ford earned ten battle stars for his service in combat on the USS Monterey. Even Lyndon Johnson,

72

George Washington

who flew only one bombing mission during World War II as an “observer,” narrowly escaped becoming a casualty of war himself.3 From Washington and Jackson to Colin Powell and John McCain, the veneration that Americans hold for those who have served in time of war is not surprising. As Philip Kunhardt, Jr., notes: “From the beginning, the presidency has beckoned to national heroes. Renowned for their service in time of war, they seem to stand above politics, holding out the possibility of a special kind of leadership.”4 In the pantheon of wartime heros who would ascend to the presidency, two leaders stand out above all others for their exemplary service as soldiers, statesmen, and presidents—George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower. Washington was the indispensable man and not even Eisenhower can equal his special place in American history. Indeed, as Kunhardt notes, Washington is “the most revered of all” our chief executives. “He was America’s only classical hero, cut in the mold of the ancient Romans. And he was entrusted with the presidency not so much for his generalship as for his restraint and civility and love for his country.”5 But among twentieth-century leaders, Eisenhower’s stature is equally secure. Eisenhower’s command of the Allied forces at D-Day and his presidential leadership during the perilous Cold War years of the 1950s ensure his standing in history. Indeed, in the entire landscape of American history, the closest counterpart to Washington in temperament, dignity, stature, and accomplishment in war and in peace is Dwight David Eisenhower. “Like Washington, Ike appeared to be above politics; early on no one even knew whether he was a Democrat or Republican. And although he was far more politically motivated than anyone realized, throughout his presidency he remained a committed centrist, working hard trying to hold the entire country together.”6 As will be shown below, the parallels between Washington and Eisenhower are striking—all the more so since they served the nation in such different times, and under such different circumstances. Both men were distinguished generals in wartime and dignified leaders of the nation in their role as President. Both men were as revered by statesmen and diplomats as they had been by the soldiers who served under their command on the front lines of battle. In matters of character, comportment, and leadership style, the similarities are broad and deep. Both men possessed sterling character, though both struggled with fierce tempers. Washington and Eisenhower were men of dispassionate and independent judgment. Even their political opponents acknowledged that they placed the nation’s interest ahead of personal gain or partisan advantage. Both men enjoyed great acclaim and broad public support upon taking office as President of the United States. Both were highly confident individuals who approached the presidency as a collective institution and delegated broadly to their subordinates while keeping all of the truly important decisions of

Duty, Honor, Country

73

the day in their own hands. Neither man would have countenanced the modern Neustadtian view of the office as a one-man show. Charisma and celebrity meant nothing to Washington and Eisenhower, but stature, reputation, and constitutional propriety meant everything. Both men had of necessity relied on teamwork to prevail in wartime, and both readily applied the lessons of teamwork to their leadership as chief executives of the federal government. Washington, with Hamilton’s able assistance, invented the American cabinet, which he utilized with great facility. Eisenhower, with equal adeptness, transformed a languishing cabinet into a body of significant stature and authority, and made the most effective use of the cabinet as an advisory body of all twentieth-century presidents. THE PERSONA OF LEADERSHIP: REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND DEMEANOR Washington and Eisenhower achieved such great eminence in their illustrious service to the nation as military leaders during critical moments in the nation’s history that the office of President of the United States was practically a step down for them. Indeed, both men displayed a healthy distance from the lure of the presidential office. Eisenhower turned down overtures from both parties to run for president in 1948,7 and Washington decided not to seek an all-but-certain third term in office. In their long careers of service to the nation, both exhibited qualities of character and of leadership that were readily discernible, both contemporaneously and retrospectively. When Washington resigned as commander of Virginia’s frontier fighters in 1758 at the age of only twenty-six, the officers under his command commended him as a seasoned leader in every respect. “In our earliest infancy, you took us under your tuition, trained us 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, from which the greatest military achievements have been derived—first heightened our natural emulation, and our desire to excel.”8 Washington’s reputation took on an almost mythical dimension at a very young age. But as James Flexner notes, his rise to eminence was based on very real, if somewhat fortuitous, events. Washington was active in the French and Indian War from the age of twenty-one to almost twenty-six. He was from the first never a follower, always a leader, even if sometimes subject to greater authority than his own. At twenty-two he became Virginia’s most celebrated hero. . . . During the Braddock massacre, when every mounted officer was struck, he re-

74

George Washington

mained uninjured. And then there was the time he rode between the two firing columns, striking up the guns with his sword. In subsequent years, during the Revolution, Washington was again and again to take the most foolhardy risks, but the bullets although they tore his clothes and killed his horses, never touched his body. Washington’s seeming invulnerability to gunfire, more suited to mythology than factual history, was observed—he commented on it wonderingly himself—but it was only the most exotic aspect of that charisma which brought him so early the confidence and respect of his fellow men.9

It is little wonder that contemporary accounts are so full of accolades. But many go beyond mere heroics under fire. In 1760, when Washington had reached the ripe age of twenty-eight, Captain George Mercer wrote of his former commander: “In conversation he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential, and engaging. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified.”10 In 1775 Benjamin Rush, a physician and politician, wrote that Washington “has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people.”11 Noting that he had known General Washington “intimately and thoroughly,” Thomas Jefferson remarked in a remembrance written in 1814: “His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.”12 But what Jefferson remembered most about Washington was his character, which, he wrote “was, in its mass, perfect.” “It may truly be said,” Jefferson added, “that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance.”13 The insights of Washington’s peers regarding his sterling character take on significance from their sheer redundancy. Many observers, from many perspectives, perceive the same or similar qualities in ample degree, and report them with similar superlatives. Perhaps the most important source of insight among Washington’s peers is found in the writing of John Marshall. Marshall served under Washington’s command at Valley Forge and fought with valor during the American Revolution. Fittingly, it was George Washington, himself, who convinced John Marshall to leave his lucrative law practice in Virginia to run successfully for a seat in the U.S. Congress.14 He later became the most distinguished Chief Justice in American history, but one of his major intellectual contributions was his impressive fivevolume biography titled The Life of George Washington. Marshall was by no means an impartial observer of Washington’s talents, but he reinforces in eloquent prose the contemporary perceptions of Washington. Marshall described Washington as possessing a “high and correct sense of personal dignity,” indeed, an “indescribable dignity” and reserve.15

Duty, Honor, Country

75

To Marshall, Washington’s strength lay not in his brilliance but in his unsurpassed judgment and courage of conviction. But Washington’s most pronounced quality, in Marshall’s view, was his patriotism. For Washington, service to the nation always took precedence over any personal aspirations. Marshall articulated his admiration with great effect in his eulogy of Washington. Noting that Washington’s “various talents, combining all the capacities of a statesman, with those of a soldier, fitted him alike to guide the councils and the armies of our nation,” Marshall went on to enumerate these talents, drawing special attention to Washington’s keen sense of judgment: Possessing a clear and penetrating mind, a strong and sound judgment, calmness and temper for deliberation, with invincible firmness and perseverance in resolutions maturely formed; drawing information from all; acting from himself, with incorruptible integrity and unvarying patriotism; his own superiority and the public confidence alike marked him as the man designed by heaven to lead in the great political as well as military events which have distinguished the era of his life.16

Dwight David Eisenhower did not climb the ladder of fame nearly so fast as Washington, but the qualities that we commonly associate with Washington’s leadership, such as dignity, prudence, good judgment, patriotism, and integrity, are evidenced in abundance in the life of the general that the nation came to know as Ike. A junior staff officer writing home to his mother provides an early glimpse of Eisenhower’s leadership in the Army at age twenty-seven in January 1918. Our new captain, Eisenhower by name, is, I believe one of the most efficient and best Army officers in the country. He is a . . . corker and has put more into us in three days than we got in all the previous time we were here. He is a giant for build and at West Point was a noted football and physical culture fiend. He knows his job, is enthusiastic, can tell us what he wants us to do and is pretty human, though wickedly harsh and abrupt. . . . Every now and then Eisenhower would jump on us and say we were having too good a time, call us to attention and put us through the manual for five minutes, but you could see that he enjoyed it all too.17

Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, the egotistical and acerbic British commander who had a relationship with Eisenhower that might be described as strained, was nonetheless flattering in his own assessment of the general, saying: “He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bit of metal. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once.”18 In selecting Eisenhower to serve as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Franklin Roosevelt told his son James

76

George Washington

that “Eisenhower is the best politician among the military men. He is a natural leader who can convince men to follow him.”19 Another prominent British officer, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who worked closely with Eisenhower during the war, offered his impressions of the general in a postwar interview: I liked him at once. He struck me as being completely sincere, straightforward and very modest. In those early days I rather had the impression that he was not very sure of himself; but who could wonder at that? He was in supreme command of one of the greatest amphibious operations of all time, and was working in a strange country . . . But . . . it was not long before one recognized him as the really great man he is—forceful, able, direct and far-seeing, with great charm of manner, and always with a rather naive wonder at attaining the high position in which he found himself.20

Sir Cunningham’s description of Eisenhower’s almost naive wonderment at his position as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces brings to mind John Marshall’s observation concerning Washington’s “innate and unassuming modesty.” Washington, Marshall suggested, had no “avidity for power,” and his offices were “unsought by himself.” “If Washington possessed ambition,” Marshall concluded, “that passion was, in his bosom, so regulated by principles, or controlled by circumstances, that it was neither vicious, nor turbulent.”21 It can be said that neither Washington nor Eisenhower was a powerseeking or ego-driven individual. Their modesty was not false, but their confidence in the ability to make important decisions was secure. Whether it was Washington’s unflappable appearance on horseback, in the midst of artillery fire, during the planned retreat after the Battle of Trenton, or Eisenhower’s decision to move ahead with the Normandy invasion despite inclement weather and reservations among some key subordinates, both staked their ground without equivocation. Complementing their modesty and confidence, Washington and Eisenhower also shared the trait of unqualified integrity. Jefferson wrote of Washington: “His integrity was pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.”22 Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose writes that “scrupulous honesty was an integral part of Eisenhower’s character . . . He saw and experienced the payoff of trust.”23 When President Roosevelt pressured Eisenhower “to get tough with the local French” during World War II, Eisenhower refused, saying, “My whole strength in dealing with the French has been based upon my refusal to quibble or to stoop to any kind of subterfuge or double dealing.” Eisenhower’s scrupulous honesty in dealing

Duty, Honor, Country

77

with the French, Ambrose notes, garnered respect and trust. A French official said to Eisenhower: “I have found that you will not lie or evade in dealings with us, even when it appears you could easily do so.”24 Beyond the qualities of character that resonated in their personal demeanor, Washington and Eisenhower rigorously adhered to a belief that discipline itself is a cornerstone of effective leadership. Washington, Flexner notes, “was known as a disciplinarian in military matters.”25 As one veteran who had served under Washington’s command put it: “Method and exactness are the forte of his character.”26 Hence, Matthew Spalding notes, the first order of business under Washington’s command of the Continental Army “centered on encouraging discipline and the basic civility needed to build camaraderie and teach the greater good of their common cause.”27 In a letter written to the president of Congress in September 1776, Washington explained his desire to instill discipline in the Army. “Men accustomed to unbounded freedom, and not controul,” he wrote, “cannot brook the Restraint which is indispensably necessary to the good order and Government of an Army; without which, licentiousness, and every kind of disorder triumphantly reign.”28 Washington’s initial orders, Spalding notes, “laid out the rules by which he ‘expected and required’ his army to act: all geographic distinctions were to be laid aside ‘so that one and the same Spirit may animate the whole’; exact discipline and due subordination, the failure of which leads to ‘shameful disappointment and disgrace,’ were to be observed.”29 Eisenhower, like Washington, was “a man of discipline.” As former presidential speech writer William Bragg Ewald states: To George Washington, Eisenhower’s supreme hero among American presidents . . . discipline was the soul of an army. To Eisenhower it was also the soul of public service. Specifically it was the means of constraining and subduing and directing the power of individual personality to the purposes of a hierarchy of organizations and causes greater than oneself, from Army to party to administration to nation.30

Eisenhower’s sense of discipline and loyalty reinforced what General George Marshall called the “cardinal attribute of a successful officer: selflessness.”31 Following Washington’s example, Eisenhower put duty, honor, and country ahead of any concern for his own personal gain.32 “It is trite indeed,” Eisenhower noted, to suggest that discipline is “a matter of leadership, but evidence of failures along this line are so common in military experience as to warrant the continuous and earnest attention, even of very senior officers.”33 In Eisenhower’s view, morale was “the most highly important of any military attribute.” And morale “could never be obtained through pampering the men, but rather through self-respect, intensive training and adequate leadership.”34 Discipline was not just for subordinates. Washington and Eisenhower

78

George Washington

both realized that their own reputations were based in part on how well they presented themselves to their troops, and later to the nation in their capacity as chief executive. Both strove to comport themselves in their public service with the same dignity and decorum that they had practiced as generals. Washington had the unique burden of shaping the office of the presidency knowing that his every action would be closely scrutinized by his contemporaries and by future Presidents. Consequently, he took great care to set an example worthy of emulation by his successors. He wanted to establish rules of behavior, Forrest McDonald writes, “that would strike a balance between ‘too free an intercourse and too much familiarity’ which would reduce the dignity of office, and ‘an ostentatious show of monarchial aloofness,’ which would be improper in a republic.”35 Washington elaborated on the importance that he attached to preserving the dignity of office in a letter to John Adams of May 10, 1789: “The President in all matters of business and etiquette, can have no object but to demean himself in his public character, in such a manner as to maintain the dignity of Office, without subjecting himself to the imputation of superciliousness or unnecessary reserve. Under these impressions, he asks for your candid and undisguised opinions.”36 Washington worked hard to impart an image consistent with his “natural gravity and dignity” and his “simplicity of tastes and manners.” He was, McDonald suggests, a “consummate actor” who took great care to guard his reputation while progressing to “nobler and grander” roles in his career as a statesman.37 “He fully understood,” McDonald adds, “that the presidency, if properly established, would be dual in nature, chief executive officer but also ritualistic and ceremonial head of state, and that the latter function was quite as vital as the more prosaic administrative one.”38 Eisenhower’s public persona, like Washington’s, reflected a combination of “conscious study,” careful role playing, and innate force of personality. Throughout the presidential campaign of 1952, Ambrose notes, Eisenhower “strengthened his image as a fair-minded, decent man, highly intelligent but with a common touch, accustomed to keeping his head in a crisis, experienced, a born leader. He also preserved his image as a man who was accepting the responsibility of the Presidency because it was his duty to do so, rather than a man who was seeking a job for ambitious personal reasons.”39 Eisenhower went to great lengths to mask his political astuteness by keeping much of his political leadership behind the scenes and out of the public eye. He sought to distance himself publicly from traditional images of politics and politicians realizing that he had great capital with the public as an individual who had not been a career politician. As presidential aide Robert Murphy notes:

Duty, Honor, Country

79

[Eisenhower] had that ability to dissimulate that I’ve seen on so many occasions, putting on that bland exterior and saying, “Well, I’m just a simple soldier, I don’t know anything about politics.” If he said that once, I’ve heard it a dozen times, and he did have good political instincts and a certain knowledge that was very helpful to him. . . . But this was very useful as a sort of pose. . . . Lots of people believed that he was a nice simple man. But Eisenhower had a very definite shrewdness and purpose to it all.40

Reinforcing this view, Andrew Goodpaster, who served Eisenhower as his staff secretary in the White House, agrees that it was no accident that Eisenhower gave the appearance of being above politics. He wanted to “disguise politics,” Goodpaster suggests, so that he would have a “freer hand in exerting influence over political affairs while avoiding the stigma of being a professional politician.”41 So effective was his “hidden-hand” presidency that many in the press and the academic world misjudged his effectiveness as a leader. In reality, Fred Greenstein writes, “Eisenhower was politically astute and informed, actively engaged in putting his personal stamp on public policy,” and very effective in quietly implementing “a carefully thought out conception of leadership to the conduct of his presidency.”42 Eisenhower shared with Washington a concern for maintaining the dignity of office as chief of state while providing adept administrative and political leadership as chief executive officer of the federal government. With regard to the chief-of-state role, Eisenhower believed that the president should exhibit a “respectable image of American life before the world.”43 One of Eisenhower’s early critics acknowledged, after reflection, that his contributions to the enhancement of the dignity of the presidency deserved more notice than he and other scholars had previously given them. In the Cook lectures at the University of Michigan, political scientist Richard Neustadt said: “Prestige seems to have been always on the mind of at least one modern president, Eisenhower. In light of subsequent events, this is an aspect of his presidency which I, among others, find more attractive now than I did then. As a national hero from the Second World War, he lent the office his own aura, and was conscious that he did so.”44 INTENSITY AND TEMPER The strength of character and the attention to decorum that made Washington and Eisenhower so impressive as leaders was marred by one defect. Both men possessed stormy tempers that they occasionally unleashed with great effect. Of Washington, Gouverneur Morris wrote: “Thousands have learned to restrain their passions, though few among them had to contend with passions so violent.”45 Jefferson noted that Washington’s temper “was

80

George Washington

naturally high toned, but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.”46 Unquestionably, there were occasions when Washington’s temper got the best of him. After growing weary of Citizen Genet, Jefferson recorded that Washington became “much inflamed; got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself”; and said “that he had rather be on his farm than to be made Emperor of the World.” Even in a fit of temper, Washington’s words were eloquent! Another famous instance of Washington’s wrath on display took place when the president personally submitted a treaty to the Senate for its “Advice and Consent” early in his administration. When the Senate proceeded to debate and dillydally in the presence of Washington, he grew increasingly impatient and abruptly left the chamber in a “Violent fret,” after saying in a clearly audible voice: “This defeats every purpose of my coming here.”47 Similar descriptions can be found concerning Eisenhower’s legendary temper. One aide suggested that Eisenhower was a “Bessemer furnace” in personality.48 Journalist Theodore White noted that Eisenhower’s rosy public smile “could give way, in private, to furious outbursts of temper.”49 One such outburst is colorfully depicted by Stephen Ambrose in his account of Eisenhower’s leadership during World War II. After a particularly weary and trying week that ended with a seven-hour rain-soaked trip to the front in Italy, Eisenhower invited his chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, to dinner. Smith, who had accompanied Eisenhower on the trip, declined. Eisenhower, Ambrose notes, had a violent reaction. He snapped that Smith was discourteous, that no subordinate, not even the chief of staff, could abruptly decline his commanding officer’s invitation to dinner. Smith cursed, told Eisenhower he wanted to quit. Eisenhower said that would be just fine with him. “By God,” he thundered, “I’ll do what Churchill wants and leave you in the Mediterranean.” “That suits me,” Smith growled. The two men then settled into a sullen silence. After a bit, Smith mumbled an apology. Eisenhower did too, and they agreed to forget the whole thing.50

The well-documented tempers of Washington and Eisenhower were perhaps the elements of their leadership of which they were least proud, but temper itself seems to have been an integral part of their leadership, as the examples below illustrate. Consistent with Machiavelli’s dictum, Washington and Eisenhower seemed to instinctively know that in some circumstances it is better for a leader to be feared than loved. Washington’s temper undoubtedly served as a catalyst for action when it was unleashed with all of its wrath at the battle of Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey in 1778. Charles Lee, an American officer, ordered his troops to fall back after an assault on British forces at Monmouth Court-

Duty, Honor, Country

81

house, believing that the British had superior numbers. When Washington arrived at the scene he confronted Lee about the cause of “all this disorder and confusion.” Not satisfied with Lee’s explanation, Washington filled the air with profanity “till the leaves shook on the trees.”51 One observer recorded that Washington “swore like an angel from heaven”—and added— “Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.” Washington’s temper, at least in this instance, got his point across better than mere words alone—for as Lee later recorded: Washington’s “manner” was “much stronger and more severe” than his words. The net result of Washington’s display of temper, Brookhiser notes, is that, instead of a retreat, the troops battled to a draw.52 The Marquis de Lafayette, who served on General Washington’s staff, recorded that Washington’s mere presence “stopped the retreat.” He “seemed to arrest fortune with one glance,” Lafayette wrote. “He brought order out of confusion, animated his troops, and led them to success.”53 As Lafayette continued his account, what is most striking is his use of the word “calculated” to describe Washington’s behavior. As he put it: “His graceful bearing on horseback, his calm and deportment which still retained a trace of displeasure . . . were all calculated to inspire the highest degree of enthusiasm.”54 Like Washington, Eisenhower “had bouts with genuine, deep, anger— the type that can be the enemy of leadership. With Montgomery, with McCarthy, with others, Eisenhower struggled to control his anger by following his own rule; ‘Never question another man’s motives. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.’”55 Eisenhower did learn to control his fiery temper in most public settings. A striking example of forbearance, Greenstein suggests, involved Eisenhower’s working relationship with the caustic and arrogant British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery during World War II. Eisenhower told General George Marshall that he had sized up Montgomery and was therefore able to curb his own animus toward him.56 Eisenhower explained to General Marshall that he “reasoned with the Field Marshall when necessary, gave him his way when he felt it appropriate, but had no hesitation about overruling him.”57 As in Washington’s case, Eisenhower’s temper appears, at times, to have been “calculated” for instrumental effect. As Ambrose writes, “Anger that is contrived, that is put on for show and a purpose, an actor’s anger, can be an effective tool of leadership. It was one Eisenhower used often.”58 As with Lafayette’s description of the effects of Washington’s “calculated” loss of temper at the battle of Monmouth Courthouse, Eisenhower could make good use of his own fomidable temper. “Although Eisenhower viewed his bad temper as a special curse,” Greenstein observes, “his awareness of it and his capacity to control it enabled him to turn it to practical use on occasion.”59 One such occasion discussed by Greenstein depicts Eisenhower

82

George Washington

using his “anger” to good advantage in postwar negotiations involving the command and control of NATO forces in southern Europe. In a meeting with Italian Defense Minister Pacciardi in Naples, Eisenhower unexpectedly utilized the services of his translator in NATO negotiations, Vernon A. Walters, to terminate an unacceptable agreement. Defense Minister Pacciardi began the meeting by insisting that the Greek and Turkish forces be placed under Italian command, even though representatives of both nations “had told Eisenhower that this was out of the question.” During the ensuing discussion, Walters recalled: Eisenhower suddenly appeared to misunderstand something that Pacciardi had just said and I had translated. Pacciardi, after a few feeble attempts to explain that he had been misunderstood, gave in and accepted a U.S. commander for the Greek and Turkish sector of NATO. I was greatly crestfallen as it appeared to Pacciardi that I had mistranslated what he had said and that this had provoked Eisenhower’s anger. . . . The matter of the command settled, we returned to Naples airport and took off for Paris. I was sitting in the forward cabin feeling quite glum when General Eisenhower came forward, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Dick, if I sometimes appear to misunderstand what you say, it is just that I need a hook on which to hang my anger.” He added with a grin, “It worked too.”60

A LEADERSHIP OF MODERATION AND PRUDENCE Historians may consider it ironic that Washington and Eisenhower had such fierce tempers yet were champions of moderation and prudence in politics. There is less irony when one considers how each tried (usually with success) to restrain and control their tempers. The search for control of their own tempers may, in fact, explain why both men sought moderation as political leaders. Indeed, an essential characteristic of the leadership styles of Washington and Eisenhower was their insistence on moderation, cooperation, and nonbelligerent discourse in their relations with Congress and the executive branch. That Washington and Eisenhower attached great weight to cooperative, dignified, and nonconfrontational behavior can be adduced with striking similarity in their private letters to subordinates. Consider, for example, Washington’s candid letter to Gouverneur Morris appraising Senate reservations concerning Morris’s suitability for appointment as the nation’s minister to France. Notifying Morris of his intent to nominate him, Washington summarized the sentiments of the Senate and warned Morris that Senate confirmation might become sticky unless Morris attempted to change his demeanor. As Washington put it: Whilst your abilities, knowledge in the affairs of this Country, and disposition to serve it, were adduced and asserted on one hand; you were charged on the other hand, with levity and imprudence of conversation and conduct. It was urged that

Duty, Honor, Country

83

your habits of expression indicated a hauteur disgusting to those, who happen to differ from you in sentiment; and among a people, who study civility and politeness more than any other nation, it must be displeasing. . . . But not to go further into detail, I will place the ideas of your political adversaries in the light which their arguments have presented them to me: vizt. That the promptitude, with which your lively and brilliant imagination is displayed, allows too little time for deliberation and correction; and is the primary cause of those sallies, which too often offend, and of that ridicule of characters, which begets enmity not easy to be forgotten, but which might easily be avoided, if it was under the control of more caution and prudence. In a word, that it is indispensably necessary, that more circumspection should be observed by our representatives abroad, than they conceive you are inclined to adopt.61

While expressing “fullest confidence” in Morris, Washington concluded his letter with the proviso that “supposing the allegations to be founded in whole or part,” Morris would find no difficulty “to effect a change and thereby silence, in the most unequivocal and satisfactory manner, your political opponents.” Washington’s forceful insinuation that Morris could “effect a change” in behavior, and “thereby silence his critics” reveals a resolute and confident leadership. Convinced that Morris was the right individual for the position, Washington was intent on bringing about a modification in Morris’s demeanor for the good of the nominee and the nation. Eisenhower demonstrated a similar knack for sizing up the strengths and weakness of individuals in his administration, and for providing firm guidelines for their conduct. Note, for example, Eisenhower’s stern rebuke of his secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, for his dogmatic behavior in dealing with members of Congress on the issue of price supports for farmers. When relations with Congress and the Agriculture Department appeared strained in 1958, Eisenhower sent a carefully crafted letter to Benson in which he stated his desire to avoid extremes in his legislative program. More importantly, Eisenhower urged Benson to develop a more flexible approach in his relations with congressional leaders, stating: In your efforts to improve Federal programs affecting agriculture I have always supported you enthusiastically; I shall continue to do so. But in what follows I shall attempt to give you some of my thinking about the legislative procedures through which we hope to secure an improvement in those and other necessary laws. I think my text could well be the old German aphorism, “Never lose the good in seeking too long for the best,” or as some say it, “The best is always the enemy of the good.” I was impressed by the apparent attitude of some of the leaders at the [legislative leaders] meeting Tuesday. They, while announcing their continuing approval of the flexible price support system, believe that we, the members of the Administration, are now guilty of inflexibility.

84

George Washington

In the next paragraph, Eisenhower was careful to note that Republicans in Congress were divided over several issues, not just the Farm Program. He finished setting the stage for his reprimand of Benson by noting “that never in any one year have we gotten exactly what we wanted.” Then, diplomatically, but forcefully, Eisenhower wrote: “All I want to say here is that I believe it is not good Congressional politics to fail to listen seriously to the recommendations of our own Congressional leaders.” Undoubtedly aware of Secretary Benson’s reputation as a stubborn ideologue, Eisenhower then tailored the final paragraphs of his letter: Sometimes in the workings of a democratic society, it is not sufficient merely to be completely right. We recall that Aristides lost the most important election of his life because the Athenian people were tired of hearing him called “The Just.” As of this moment, I can see no way in which you can logically take action that our best Congressional friends would consider as an amelioration of their legislative difficulties. But I do believe that in future planning we should avoid advanced positions of inflexibility. We must have some room for maneuver, or we shall suffer for it.62

Eisenhower’s letter to Benson conveys his general philosophy of moderation in politics. He believed that leadership involves teamwork, persuasion, and, where possible, political accommodation. In his wartime working relationship with Winston Churchill, Field Marshall Montgomery, General George Patton, and other strong-willed personalities, Eisenhower had learned to grant concessions where possible, but to be firm where compromise was not possible. The complexities of Eisenhower’s leadership in World War II prepared Eisenhower extraordinarily well for nearly any political scenario that he would face as president. As Blanche Cook writes, “Eisenhower’s military strategy depended on his ability to secure the trust of both Churchill and Stalin, negotiate with all the bitterly contending French factions, coordinate the frequently opposing political and military interests within his own command, and convince all the delicate personalities of the international anti-Fascist forces that he was sensitive to their specific and personal needs.”63 Eisenhower performed these tasks brilliantly. His skill as a political as well as a military leader, which had so impressed Franklin Roosevelt, was inexplicably lost on scholars who wrote about Eisenhower’s presidency in a historical vacuum. Richard Neustadt, in his seminal study Presidential Power, argued that Eisenhower brought with him the skills of a military commander with no appreciation for the differences between military command and political persuasion. Yet Eisenhower brought to the presidency vast experience in political persuasion and articulated his sophisticated understanding of the role of persuasion in leadership long before Neustadt wrote Presidential Power. In a letter to William Phillips of June 5, 1953, for example, Eisen-

Duty, Honor, Country

85

hower wrote: “I think it is fair to say that . . . only a leadership that is based on honesty of purpose, calmness and inexhaustible patience in conference and persuasion . . . can, in the long run, win out.”64 In the same letter, Eisenhower wrote: “I deplore and deprecate the table-pounding, name-calling methods that columnists so much love. This is not because of any failure to love a good fight; it merely represents my belief that such methods are normally futile.” Eisenhower elaborated on his philosophy of leadership at a presidential press conference on November 14, 1956 in words that discredit Neustadt’s widely read criticism of Eisenhower as a military man who was in over his head in the White House. As Eisenhower put it: Leadership is a word and a concept that has been more argued than almost any other I know. I am not one of the desk-pounding type that likes to stick out his jaw and look like he is bossing the show. I would far rather get behind and, recognizing the frailties and the requirements of human nature, I would rather try to persuade a man to go along—because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.65

It is perplexing that for two decades after Eisenhower left office, scholarship in general, and Neustadt’s work in particular, failed to grasp the sophistication of Eisenhower’s approach to leadership. DOERS AND THINKERS Neither Washington nor Eisenhower had the liberal arts credentials of many of their contemporaries. Washington’s three successors all completed formal programs of study at prestigious universities—John Adams graduated from Harvard, Jefferson from William and Mary, and Madison from Princeton. All had broad training in philosophy, rhetoric, literature, Greek, and Latin, among other fields. And although Eisenhower’s immediate predecessor, Harry Truman, had virtually no formal study in the liberal arts, his earlier predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, and his successor, John F. Kennedy, were both Harvard graduates with government and political history as their primary focus of study. The formal aspects of Eisenhower’s own education were quite narrow, focusing on the engineering-oriented curriculum of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. What is clear though, is that Washington and Eisenhower, through both individual initiative and personal experience, acquired broad knowledge and skill at various points in their careers that served them exceedingly well in shaping their development as leaders and their important military and presidential decisions. Richard Brookhiser notes that “we know very little about Washington’s education.”66 But we do know from his letters and from public documents

86

George Washington

that Washington was a learned man, and that he had a particularly rich understanding of history. As Forrest McDonald writes: Washington, though lacking much formal education and being by no means a bookish man, was nonetheless knowledgeable about history. He had read a great deal concerning ancient Rome, and he was thoroughly versed in the Whig interpretation of English history, especially the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century. In addition, he read biographies of eminent statesmen. Inquiring as to a job applicant’s suitability, he queried the man’s “depth in the science of Politicks, or in other words, his acquaintance with history and his general knowledge.”67

Richard Norton Smith, the director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, and a person predisposed to notice such things as library holdings, was struck by how well organized and stocked George Washington left his personal library at Mount Vernon. Washington possessed nearly 900 books neatly arranged by topic from husbandry and history, to statecraft, geographic surveys, and “works of imaginative fancy.” Among the books that Washington had collected were John Locke’s On Human Understanding, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and Aesop’s Fables. The collection also includes the speeches of Cicero, Milton’s poems, novels by Henry Fielding and Samuel Butler, and a “well thumbed copy of his favorite play, Addison’s Cato, which the general had once staged at Valley Forge to raise the morale of a dispirited army.”68 Washington’s correspondence and his own aforementioned staging of Cato suggest that he had more than a passing interest in his own books and, as Smith suggests, that he “was more of a reader than generally supposed.”69 Despite his own lack of formal education, Washington greatly appreciated the value of deep study and reflection. Washington’s avid reading of the Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, for example, reflected his commitment to what Matthew Spalding calls “unremitting practice of moral virtue,” as an indispensable part of character development. As Washington counseled a family member: “It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.”70 “The advantages of a finished education,” Washington wrote, are a “highly cultivated mind, and a proper sense of your duties to God and man.” Washington’s own life, Spalding suggests, “is a good example of this advice, as he was constantly striving to control his own passions and habituate qualities of good character.”71 Even so, Washington’s education was, as Spalding notes, “primarily practical.” There can be no doubt that Washington’s own practical experience as an officer and aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock during the French and Indian War (1754–1758); in the Virginia House of Burgesses (1759–1774); as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774– 1775); as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the

Duty, Honor, Country

87

American Revolution (1775–1783); as presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787; and as President of the United States, continued to enlarge and refine the already considerable talents that he possessed. Washington’s development in the crucible of war and politics undoubtedly reflected what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said that “forty years of experience in government is worth a century of bookreading.”72 Eisenhower had substantially more formal education than Washington, but as in Washington’s case it was Eisenhower’s informal and practical education that contributed greatly to his development as a leader. Eisenhower shared with Washington a strong interest in mathematics. While Washington demonstrated his mathematical skills as a surveyor, Eisenhower excelled in plane geometry in high school and scored near the top— arithmetic (96), algebra (94)—in his admissions examination for West Point. Eisenhower also shared with Washington a strong interest in ancient history. Like Washington, Eisenhower was left to his own resourcefulness and individual initiative to pursue this interest. In his informal memoir At Ease, Eisenhower recounts that as a child he loved reading ancient history so much that his mother would lock his books on Greek and Roman history in the closet on weekends in order to get him to complete his chores.73 His broad reading of ancient history included study of Hannibal, Caesar, Pericles, Socrates, and Themistocles. Not surprisingly, when Eisenhower turned his attention to the American horizon, he became a devoted student of George Washington. “When I got around to Americans,” Eisenhower wrote, “Washington was my hero.” “The qualities that excited my admiration,” Eisenhower continued, “were Washington’s stamina and patience in adversity, first, and then his indomitable courage, daring, and capacity for self-sacrifice.” But what struck Eisenhower most about Washington was “the beauty of his character.” “His Farewell address, his counsels to his countrymen, on the occasions such as his speech at Newburgh to the rebellious officers of his Army, exemplified the human qualities I frankly admired.”74 Eisenhower was a good student in high school, earning mostly “A” grades during his junior and senior years. This pattern changed, however, when Eisenhower attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As Ambrose notes, “Eisenhower’s studies” at West Point “were overwhelmingly narrow and technical, with the emphasis on civil and military engineering . . . English was composition, never literature; history was fact, never inquiry. It was all rote learning.”75 Eisenhower was not challenged and settled for graduating sixty-first in a class of 164 (though the class initially consisted of 265 plebes). Class standing meant little in the class of 1915. Of the 164 graduates, 59 rose to the rank of brigadier general or higher, with three, including Eisenhower, rising to the rank of general of the army—making it the most famous class in the history of West Point.76

88

George Washington

For Eisenhower, ability and achievement did not intersect until his midthirties when he graduated first in a class of 275 at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This experience provided Eisenhower with the type of rigorous challenge that he needed to focus his keen intellect on practical problem solving. “He was in direct competition with 275 of the best officers in the Army, every one of them handpicked by his superiors to reflect credit on their particular branch of the service.”77 The Command and General Staff School, Ambrose notes, “was designed to discover not only who had brains, but who could take the strain” in an environment in which the workload and competition were nearly overwhelming. Eisenhower found the challenge “exhilarating.” Now that Eisenhower had been ranked the first in his class, the stage was set for his slow but steady climb in the Army that eventually led to his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. Perhaps the single most important influence in Eisenhower’s education occurred in the years between West Point and Fort Leavenworth, when Eisenhower was mentored by General Fox Conner. Eisenhower first met Conner in the fall of 1920 when he and Mamie were invited with the Conners to be dinner guests at Colonel George Patton’s quarters at Camp Meade, Maryland. Patton and Eisenhower were neighbors in the converted officer barracks at Camp Meade, and Eisenhower was happy to have the opportunity to meet Conner. After dinner, Conner asked Eisenhower and Patton to explain to him their ideas about the future of tank warfare. Conner was so impressed with Eisenhower that he arranged through General Pershing to have Eisenhower assigned as his executive officer in the Panama Canal Zone.78 Eisenhower was impressed with Conner and viewed the opportunity to serve with him as a “wonderful chance.”79 While in Panama, Conner opened up his extensive private library to Eisenhower and had him read such classics as The Federalist Papers, Clausewitz’s On War, Freemantle’s account of the Battle of Gettysburg, and works by Plato, Tacitus, and Nietzsche, among others. Conner would invite Eisenhower to his quarters to discuss the books, asking probing questions and requiring Eisenhower to think critically about the subjects under review. Many years later, Eisenhower wrote that “life with General Conner was a sort of graduate school in military affairs and the humanities, leavened by the comments and discourses of a man who was experienced in his knowledge of men and their conduct.”80 After serving as President of the United States, Eisenhower said in an interview that “Fox Conner was the ablest man I ever knew.”81 OF WISE AND PRUDENT DECISIONS Whatever may have been lacking in the formal educations of Washington and Eisenhower was more than adequately compensated for by their im-

Duty, Honor, Country

89

peccable judgment. The approach to decision making of both men was wise and dispassionate. Washington and Eisenhower were both known for their effective use of the counsel of others in making their decisions. Both men brought to their judgments a power of perception that was greater than the sum of the individual views of their advisors. Jefferson, in his insightful remembrance of Washington’s approach to decisions, said: His mind was great and powerful, without being of the first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best. . . . Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed.82

Jefferson, in his straighforward assessment, is candid enough to suggest that Washington’s mind was not “of the first order.” But given that the “first order” consisted of Newton, Bacon, and Locke, the comment is clearly intended to be taken in a positive light. And while Washington’s analytical approach was “slow in operation” and unimaginative, it was methodical and judicious—weighing “all suggestions” and selecting “whatever was best.” Jefferson depicts an approach to decision making accentuated by “prudence,” with “every consideration” and “every circumstance” thoroughly weighed. In modern parlance, Washington sought broad input from his advisors, weighed all options carefully, and, after systematic and dispassionate consideration, selected the “best” course of action available. Jefferson’s account concerning Washington coincides nicely with the characteristics frequently associated with Eisenhower’s decision-making style. Like Washington, Eisenhower sought broad advice from his top officers during the war years, and from his cabinet and National Security Council during his years as president. He insisted on broad debate and probing discussion of issues, and he showed a Washingtonian ability to synthesize a broad array of advice in order to render prudent decisions. In April of 1942 when Eisenhower was still in Washington in the Operations Division of the War Department an officer by the name of Lucian Truscott, Jr., who was about to leave for London as a military observer, spent a day with Eisenhower observing his discussions with senior officers, congressmen, and others. In appraising Eisenhower’s methods, Truscott wrote: “Every view was considered. Each problem carefully analyzed. Eisenhower showed an extraordinary ability to place his finger at once upon the crucial fact in any problem or the weak point of any proposition . . . [and] to arrive at quick and confident decisions.”83

90

George Washington

Robert Bowie, who served as the State Department’s representative on the Planning Board of the National Security Council (NSC), and observed the president firsthand at regular meetings of the NSC, had this to say about Eisenhower’s approach to decision making as president. Often the discussion would be marked by impressive analysis by various individuals who, as intellectuals, struck you as sometimes more articulate than he. But at the end, I felt that he frequently came out with a common sense appraisal . . . which was wiser than the input which he’d received from the separate advisors. Somehow, almost in an intuitive way, in a way which quite clearly wasn’t a one, two, three lawyer’s type of analysis, nevertheless he came out with a net judgment which often struck me as wiser or more sensible than the specific positions taken by any individual.84

Bowie was not alone in his assessment of Eisenhower’s discernment and ability to synthesize. George Kennan, the distinguished former ambassador to the Soviet Union, who had been appointed by Eisenhower to head a group of foreign affairs and defense experts in the 1953 foreign-policy study that became known as Project Solarium, remarked: “In summarizing the group’s conclusions, President Eisenhower showed his intellectual ascendancy over every man in the room.”85 The most revealing analysis of Eisenhower’s approach to decision making is provided by Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon. Nixon, who sat at the President’s side during most of the 366 meetings of the National Security Council and 227 meetings of the cabinet, described Eisenhower’s approach to decisions as one that combined innovation and boldness with methodical analysis, glass-eyed realism, and, above all, prudence. As Nixon put it: He was very bold, imaginative, and uninhibited in suggesting and discussing new and completely unconventional approaches to problems. Yet he probably was one of the most deliberate and careful Presidents the country has ever had where action was concerned. Because of his military experience, he was always thinking in terms of alternatives, action and counteraction, attack and counterattack. . . . He could be very enthusiastic about half-baked ideas in the discussion stage, but when it came to making a final decision, he was the coldest, most unemotional and analytical man in the world.86

CABINET GOVERNMENT Given the similarities in their judgment and approach to decision making, it is not surprising that Eisenhower’s presidency paralleled Washington’s quite closely in the manner in which the cabinet was employed. Washington initiated regular, almost daily correspondence with his cabinet officers, commonly with queries about specific matters. “If an answer was requi-

Duty, Honor, Country

91

site,” Jefferson wrote, “the secretary of the department communicated the letter and his proposed answer to the President.” But, “if a doubt of any importance arose,” President Washington often reserved it for conference before the full cabinet. “By this means,” Jefferson noted, “he was always in accurate possession of all facts and proceedings in every part of the Union and to whatsoever department they related; he formed a central point for the different branches, preserved a unity of object and action among them, exercised that participation in the suggestion of affairs made incumbent on him, and met himself the due responsibility for whatever was done.”87 Washington utilized the cabinet in a fashion that emphasized what is known in modern parlance as the doctrine of “cabinet responsibility.” Members of the cabinet were encouraged to be candid in their remarks before the President, but once the President had made his decision, the cabinet was expected to close ranks behind the chief executive. As Flexner writes, “There was no reason, as Washington saw it, why they could not argue concerning the best road but nonetheless proceed together.”88 Washington’s seeming indifference to the depth of personal and political division in his cabinet, primarily between Hamilton and Jefferson, resulted in part from his own intensity and focus on “strengthening the nation through republican procedures.” As Flexner writes: As he had listened to Cabinet discussions, his mind had been so directed at the essence that he had discounted the fire and rancor with which arguments were presented. Preferring to comprehend each point of view in its pristine entirety, he had rarely intervened at the debates to bring the opponents into agreement. Because less time was then wasted on what he considered surface matters, he often asked each contestant to present him with a separately prepared written argument. His methods allowed every man his say, and he seriously attended to every opinion. He therefore expected all to accept his eventual conclusions.89

Eisenhower was more Washingtonian in his approach to the Cabinet than any other twentieth-century president. Unlike his immediate predecessors and successors, Eisenhower harked back to Washington’s example by calling weekly meetings of the cabinet accompanied by written position papers to shape cabinet discussion. In order to facilitate the preparation of formal agendas and cabinet papers, Eisenhower created the first cabinet secretariat in American history. Modeled after the British cabinet secretary system, which Eisenhower worked with and admired during World War II, the cabinet secretariat enabled Eisenhower’s cabinet to foster broad, statesman-like debates on the key issues of the day. Washington, writes Richard Norton Smith, viewed his cabinet officers as “general advisers, not limited by strict lines of departmental authority.” Eisenhower employed his cabinet in much the same way. Former Attorney

92

George Washington

General Herbert Brownell said of Eisenhower: “He appreciated comments that were made on all subjects that came up. I think that’s one reason he liked Foster Dulles and George Humphrey. They freely commented on other department’s operations.” The cabinet meetings, Brownell concluded, “created a sense of unity in Washington that was almost unprecedented. We felt a loyalty to our colleagues as well as to him.”90 A collegial and corporate sense of responsibility pervaded Washington’s approach to administration as much as Eisenhower’s. As Flexner notes, “No government official and no adviser, not even Jefferson or Hamilton, was encouraged to request an interview on his own. At any interview the President did grant, he discouraged personal revelation. No one was allowed to weep on his shoulder.”91 Eisenhower was just as emphatic as Washington in discouraging special pleading by members of the cabinet. As Eisenhower himself put it: “I do not believe in bringing them [Cabinet officers] in one at a time, and therefore being more impressed with the most recent one you hear than by earlier ones. You must get courageous men, men of strong views, and let them debate and argue with each other. You listen, and you see if there is anything that has been brought up that changes your view or enriches your view or adds to it.”92 As their use of the cabinet indicates, Washington and Eisenhower shared a collective and institutional view of the presidency that emphasized broad consultation, purposeful deliberation, and constitutional restraint. In marked contrast to this practice, modern writers have extolled the virtues of centralized and highly personalized leadership—even to the point of arguing, as Richard Neustadt does, for stratagems to promote the accumulation of power in the hands of the President. Neustadt asserts that the “pursuit of presidential power is good for the country” just as it is good for the president.93 The Neustadt school maintains “that the presidency is only what each president makes it, that the office is defined by the man, not vice versa. This has led to the intense personalization of the institution.”94 Political scientists of an earlier era were not as enamored with centralized power. The great constitutionalist Edward S. Corwin, unencumbered by the “cult of presidential personality,” perceptively noted that Eisenhower’s “unprecedented” use of the cabinet and the executive office of the President had gone far to relieve the “long-term trend at work in the world that consolidates power in the executive departments of all governments, first in the person of one individual, then in the ‘administration.’ ”95 Eisenhower, like Washington before him, provided bold leadership and was assertive in protecting executive authority. His exercise of executive privilege in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and his strong opposition to the Bricker Amendment, are but two examples. But like Washington, Eisenhower respected the doctrine of separation of powers and achieved a

Duty, Honor, Country

93

strong, positive relationship with Congress, and particularly its leadership. It was not uncommon for Speaker Sam Rayburn, Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson, and President Eisenhower to meet informally on the Truman balcony of the White House and regale over their common heritage as Texans—Eisenhower having been born in Texas himself. Eisenhower refused to maximize power for individual gain or public recognition. His decisions, like Washington’s, were always based on the nation’s best interests, not on partisan or political gain. CONCLUSION Eisenhower admired George Washington more than any other American President and studied his leadership closely. Yet, the parallels between Washington and Eisenhower outlined in this chapter seem less rooted in conscious emulation than in remarkable similarities in character. Whatever skills they acquired on their own, both men possessed a substantial reservoir of innate talent, and a healthy dose of virtue. They both cherished honesty, and their own straightforward manner garnered broad support and loyalty. The sense of dignity and decorum that were hallmarks of Washington’s and Eisenhower’s service to the nation instilled lasting respect, even reverence, in those who were privileged to serve under them. Both were viewed by their troops and other contemporaries as natural, “born” leaders. Neither man could entirely control his temper, but temper seems not to have been a liability and may well have been an asset on occasion. If nothing else, their fierce tempers conveyed a very human aspect of their leadership. The gravity that Marshall discerned in Washington and that Montgomery and others saw in Eisenhower was rooted, above all else, in character. And as David McCullough has so eloquently stated: “Character counts in the presidency more than any other single quality. It is more important than how much the President knows of foreign policy, or economics, or even about politics.”96 Indeed, leadership involves more than the mastery of the details of policy, or the ability to charm voters, or to empathize with their pain. As the Washington and Eisenhower examples remind us, our nation’s most remembered leaders hold deep and abiding principles, a strong sense of history, discernment and unflinching judgment, and a commitment to uphold the constitutional order and the dignity of office. NOTES 1. Those serving in the “theater of war” include: Washington, Monroe, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Pierce, Buchanan, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ford, and Bush. By theater of war, I mean that each of the

94

George Washington

nineteen was in harm’s way, even though some in much more limited ways than others. 2. The nine who attained the rank of general are: Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Hayes, and Garfield (major general); Benjamin Harrison (brigadier general); and Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower (general). 3. According to Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson flew only one bombing mission, on June 9, 1942, as an “observer” on a B-26 aircraft. Johnson flew the mission so that he could say that he had been in combat. Johnson had taken a seat on the “Wabash Cannonball,” but left briefly to use the bathroom. When he returned, his seat had been taken and Johnson was forced to switch planes to the “Heckling Hare.” That trip to the bathroom probably saved Johnson’s life since the Wabash Cannonball and one other B-26 were shot down on the same mission. So Johnson’s one mission, even if it was largely a publicity stunt, was clearly risky business. Robert Caro provides the details of this account in The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York: Knopf, 1990), pp. 39–43. 4. Philip Kunhardt, Jr., et al., The American President (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), p. 3. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 5. 7. A Gallup Poll in 1948 found that Eisenhower was the public’s first choice for President regardless of his party affiliation (which was still unknown). In a steadfast refusal to run, Eisenhower said on January 22, 1948: “It is my conviction that the necessary and wise subordination of the military to civil power will be best sustained, and our people will have greater confidence that it is to be sustained, when lifelong professional soldiers, in the absence of some obvious and overriding reasons, abstain from seeking high political office.” Historian Stephen Ambrose suggests that it is only slightly an exaggeration “to say that Eisenhower, in 1948, turned down the Presidency of the United States.” See Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), pp. 413, 463–465. 8. James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 37. 9. Ibid., pp. 36–37. 10. Quoted in Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York, The Free Press, 1996), p. 108. 11. Quoted in Brookhiser, Founding Father, p. 114. 12. Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Walter Jones, letter of January 2, 1814, in ed. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1984), p. 1319. 13. Ibid. 14. Robert K. Faulkner, “John Marshall and the ‘False Glare’ of Fame,” in Peter McNamara, The Noblest Minds: Fame, Honor, and the American Founding (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999), p. 177. 15. Ibid., p. 170. 16. John Marshall, “Eulogy on Washington,” in ed. Gary Gregg, Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 1999), p. 291. 17. Letter from Lt. Edward C. Thayer to his mother, January 1918, as quoted

Duty, Honor, Country

95

in Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 32. 18. Montgomery quoted in Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 273. 19. Roosevelt, quoted in Blanche W. Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 64. 20. Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 179. 21. Marshall, quoted in Faulkner, “John Marshall,” p. 169. 22. Jefferson to Jones, Jan. 2, 1814, in Peterson, Thomas Jefferson Writings, pp. 1318–1319. 23. Stephen Ambrose, “Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953–1961,” in ed. Robert A. Wilson, Character above All (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 63. 24. Ibid. 25. Flexner, Washington, p. 37. 26. Ibid. 27. Matthew Spalding, “Making Citizens: George Washington and the American Character,” in Gregg, Patriot Sage, p. 223. 28. Washington to the president of Congress, September 24, 1776 as quoted in Spalding, “Making Citizens,” p. 223. 29. Spalding, “Making Citizens,” p. 223. 30. William Bragg Ewald, Eisenhower the President: Crucial Days: 1951–1960 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 319. 31. Ibid., pp. 319–320. 32. Faulkner, “John Marshall,” p. 163. 33. Eisenhower, as quoted in Stephen Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), p. 60. 34. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, p. 61. 35. Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), p. 214. 36. George Washington to John Adams, letter of May 10, 1789, in George Washington, Writings (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, The Library of America, 1997), pp. 736–738. 37. McDonald, The American Presidency, p. 217. 38. Ibid., p. 216. 39. Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 570. 40. Robert Murphy, Oral History Interview #224, p. 14, Eisenhower Library. 41. General Andrew Goodpaster, interviewed by Phillip G. Henderson, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va., October 7, 1983, in Phillip G. Henderson, Managing the Presidency: The Eisenhower Legacy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), p. 22. 42. Fred I. Greenstein, “Eisenhower as an Activist President: A Look at New Evidence,” Political Science Quarterly 94 (Winter, 1979–1980), p. 577. 43. Eisenhower to Henry Luce, August 8, 1960, as quoted in Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 19. 44. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976 edition), p. 10. 45. Quoted in Forrest McDonald, “Presidential Character: The Example of

96

George Washington

George Washington,” in ed. Phillip G. Henderson, The Presidency Then and Now (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), p. 6. 46. Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Walter Jones, letter of January 2, 1814, in ed. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1984). 47. McDonald, “Presidential Character,” p. 6. 48. Quoted in Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 43. 49. Quoted in Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 16. 50. Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 275. 51. The splendid account on which these observations are based is found in Brookhiser, Founding Father, pp. 32–33. 52. Brookhiser, Founding Father, pp. 32–33. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 109. 55. Ambrose, “Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1953–1961,” p. 80. 56. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 44. 57. Ibid. 58. Ambrose, “Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1953–1961,” p. 80. 59. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 44. 60. Vernon Walters’ account is found in Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, pp. 44–45. 61. George Washington to Gouverneur Morris, January 28, 1792, in ed. John Rhodehamel, Washington Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1997), pp. 799–800. 62. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ezra Taft Benson, letter of March 20, 1958, Folder: DDE Diary: March 1958, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, Box 31, Eisenhower Library. 63. Blanche W. Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 64. 64. Dwight D. Eisenhower to William Phillips, June 5, 1953, Folder: Phillips, William, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States, 1953– 1961, Ann Whitman File, Letter Series, Box 25, Eisenhower Library. 65. Quoted in R. Gordon Hoxie, “Eisenhower and Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 4 (Fall 1983), p. 605. 66. Brookhiser, Founding Father, p. 6. 67. McDonald, “Presidential Character,” p. 11. 68. Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993), p. 269. 69. Ibid. 70. Spalding, “Making Citizens,” pp. 220–221. 71. Ibid., p. 221. 72. Jefferson, quoted in David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), p. 295. 73. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1967), p. 39. 74. Ibid., p. 41. 75. Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 46. 76. Ibid., p. 47.

Duty, Honor, Country

97

77. Ibid., p. 81. 78. Ibid., p. 75. 79. Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 178. 80. Ibid., 187. 81. Conner quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 73. 82. Jefferson to Dr. Walter Jones, letter of January 2, 1814, in Peterson, Thomas Jefferson Writings. 83. Ambrose, Eisenhower, pp. 144–145. 84. Bowie quoted in Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, pp. 33–34. 85. Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower’s staff secretary, and himself a Princeton Ph.D., recalled Kennan saying this, as recorded in Ewald, Eisenhower the President, p. 169. 86. Richard M. Nixon, from Six Crises, as quoted in John P. Burke and Fred I. Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989), p. 60. 87. Jefferson, quoted in Smith, Patriarch, p. 53. 88. Flexner, Washington, p. 263. 89. Ibid., p. 264. 90. Herbert Brownell, oral history interview, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, pp. 37–38. 91. Flexner, Washington, p. 264. 92. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Columbia oral history interview, July 20, 1967, p. 103, Eisenhower Library. 93. Neustadt, Presidential Power, p. xix. 94. Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 213. 95. Corwin, as quoted in Raymond Tatalovich, et al., “The Constitutional Presidency: Conservative Scholarship and Energy in the Executive,” Henderson, The Presidency Then and Now, p. 106. 96. David McCullough, “Harry S. Truman 1945–1953,” in Wilson, Character above All, pp. 41–42.

6 The Foreign Policy of Republicanism: A Free Society in an Unfree World William B. Allen

We are good; they are evil. The sense of this statement is misleading, innocent of all regard for circumstance. It cannot possibly be true in the sense intended by post–World War II moralists who discovered collective responsibility. Nor can it be true in the sense of those who ascribe some character to a people as opposed to individuals. Nor, again, can it be merely relatively true, in the sense that the statement is true for all and, hence, only nominally exclusive. Nonetheless, the burden of this chapter is to prove that the statement can be true, somehow. For, what hinges on that proof is the proper understanding of a just security policy in a republican regime. In 1796 French Minister Pierre Adet labeled George Washington a “Machiavellian” because of Washington’s articulation of a proper foreign policy for the United States in the famous “Farewell Address.” Adet was concerned that Washington was willing to ignore America’s defense commitment to France for the sake of America’s advantage in the world, thus ignoring higher principles for mere self-interest. Washington, however, believed that a republic needed to enjoy just as much freedom of action in the world as do monarchies and principalities. The issue was not whether the free society could carry out the needs of diplomacy and security policy, but how it could do so consistent with the moral principles underlying the regime.

100

George Washington

THE RULE OF NECESSITY: A PHILOSOPHER’S STONE FOR STATES Twenty years ago Harold W. Rood argued that free societies have an obligation to protect the rights of citizens. He appealed to the “traditional obligations” of government, so as to suggest that free societies inherit the obligations common to all states whatever their form. Appealing to the “nature of the world at large,” he saw every society’s duty to defend the weak against the strong as extending into international affairs the grounds of domestic association.1 It would be difficult to belie this understanding of “justice,” substituting the rule of law for the right of the stronger. But we are entitled to pause upon considering the praise of Henry II, that he caused “ravening wolves” to “dwell harmlessly with the sheep.” The suggestion that Henry II achieved through “fear of the law” what Christian gospel expects from agape raises the possibility that the “traditional obligations of government” are an alternative to the prospect of goodness. That is to say, where justice is well enforced by law, there is less necessity to attempt the conquest of hearts with love. Similarly, the plus que Hobbesian version of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” whispered into the ear of Queen Elizabeth, “in order not to be struck, strike,” makes the anticipation of evil a prior concern to, and condition for, the desire to be good. In Professor Rood’s terms, no one can freely entertain motivations of charity and justice where they confront the choice of safety or submission. Submission comes at the cost of all the tools of free choice. Conversely, therefore, a free people sets the horizon of peace, justice, and defense as the protective shadow for the exercise of liberty. It is rather this conclusion, than principles of goodness, that we readily discern “in the nature of politics and of the human condition.” This, I take it, is the key to his theory. It justifies his call for an “instinct” of defense like to the instincts of “justice and right.” Finally, the foundations of “justice and right,” so far as I can discern them, seem to be the penchants citizens have for the pursuit of their interests. This accounts for the competition between the instincts. Rood, however, argued that the competition is misguided, since citizens should find in defense the grounds for assuring the pursuit of individual interests. To this point, the argument does not further our search for a meaningful version of the statement “We are good; they are evil.” It rather suggests that that question is not central to the question of defense. That is the reason the obligations, as the problems, of a free society, seem not to differ from those of any other state or society. I submit, however, that on these grounds one is unable to judge whether to prefer the safety his own gov-

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

101

ernment assures or that which a would-be conqueror must ultimately promise. We still require, therefore, a means of distinguishing one form of safety from another, as a precondition for the discovery of the conditions of safety for a free society. We need to discover the implicit rule of necessity upon which Rood relied to foreclose the possibility of choosing between states as a viable means of securing the pursuit of individual interests. Such a philosopher’s stone must be political, insofar as it informs not merely theoretical discussions but the actual grounds of political decision. For that reason, I will employ a practical example, as an illustration of the difficulty. If we rehearse the relationship between the United States and the erstwhile Soviet Union, I think we will find grounds for considering obligations of states beyond those introduced by Rood. The outcome of the struggle between the two superpowers suggests that this example is a realistic appraisal of circumstances that affected the United States and Soviet Union. HOW THE WEST WON THE WAR To begin with, war with the Soviets was necessary for the United States, and the American policy that closed the struggle was predicated on that foundation. That fact did not result from the differences between them and us, albeit those differences were grave and irreconcilable. The fact is, arguments based on peoples’ systems of thought cannot invoke the rule of logical contradiction as a principle of natural necessity, for those arguments stand upon the shifting sands of the human propensity to change. The necessity of which I speak is entirely different, though not unrelated. Our teacher in this is Thucydides, among others. We fought with the Soviet Union not because they were communists, but rather because their power, which they were not free to abandon, was for us the cause, the necessary cause, of a resistance in the form of military preparations they rightly regarded with fear. The Soviets’ power lay less in their tyranny over the Russian and confederated peoples than in their projected or potential ability to rule yet other peoples by their will. The preservation of their power, including the tyranny over their own peoples, depended utterly on their exercise of that will. And that is the same thing as to say that they needed to frustrate and counteract all other ruling forces, including the political, that could diminish the force of their will (ergo the Polish problem). Their empire was so constituted that they had either to spread their power or to die (abstracting from the limit that nature places on their power). Unlike the Romans, who destroyed themselves by destroying (spreading too broadly) Roman citizenship, the Soviets destroyed themselves by developing too narrow a base of Soviet citizenship.

102

George Washington

I am not refining the containment theory, though some of its elements are recognizable here. I am saying that Soviet hegemonism, its spread, was the key to preservation of dubiety about Soviet citizenship and, hence, internal questions about a public good that might serve to coalesce opposition to the regime on the basis of a conception of the needs and ideas of a particular people. Gorbachev’s emergence and flirtation with domestic grounds of Soviet citizenship (however exiguous the economic necessities were) eroded the stability required to project Soviet power.2 Thus the importance of resistance to Jewish emigration; thus the importance of exiling or disposing of Solzhenitsyns, far-sighted dissidents who aimed to crystallize a view of a Russian if not a Soviet people, which did, in fact, become a law to the nation’s tyrants (ergo, the end of the tyranny). Until then, there were no Soviet citizens, properly speaking, and by consequence no other citizens anywhere (as far as they were concerned). Testimony: the Berlin Wall. The spread of Soviet hegemonism was not a strategy, or law of geopolitics. These things must be taken into account (for without them there could have been no Soviets). The hegemonism was a necessity for the defense of the regime. Whether the conquered peoples became communists was secondary; they served the aim of the policy with equal effectiveness when destroyed. What counted was that their fates were decreed as far as possible by Soviet will. From this it follows that the Soviets could only have survived if they were or became stronger. Otherwise they could not impose their will. No ballot box could substitute for the evidence of Soviet sovereignty (the world-historical fait accompli). No colordship could substitute. Mao awoke from his dream only in time to die a desperate man: There was and is no such thing as a Marxist-Leninist people. Marxist-Leninists must unpeople the world. Yet, the Soviet Union’s bid for superior strength was ever in jeopardy. It needed to be maintained at all costs, but it was resisted at every turn, whether openly or covertly, whether by natural forces or political intentions. I leave the natural forces to the side (along with the human propensity to change ideas). Is it not manifest, in the end, that resistance in the form of political intentions reposed on the strength and ubiquity of a United States whose own presence on earth had and still has consequences as far-reaching as those of the Soviet Union? Now consider America. Had it no concern for its own preservation? The answer is clear. What options did it have to express this concern? Here was the rub! It became clearer day by day that the United States had been reduced to its last card, or nearly so. And that was military might. What that meant is that American efforts (like those of the Soviets) aimed by means of superior force to make the American will the arbiter of other

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

103

peoples’ existences. That is, it aimed directly to frustrate the one thing most needful to Soviet survival. There are differences: the American will did not need to supplant indigenous principles and interests in order to achieve its end. It is therefore hugely ironic that American policymakers have become squeamish about developments in Afghanistan after the Soviets have been expelled. In fact, so long as there were independent, particular peoples in the areas of critical importance to Soviet expansion, the United States succeeded in frustrating Soviet plans and necessities. In this, the Soviets stood at a tactical disadvantage, for they needed literally to bring to bear on each situation force superior not only to that of the target state but also to that of the United States. In the end, the Soviet Union could not sustain such superiority. The United States repaired the breaches in its defenses, knowing that a successful defense of the United States meant defeat for the Soviet Union! Often, policymakers curried favor with democratic opinion by pretending that U.S. military moves were only counsels of general prudence and had no particular target, no enemy. The Soviets saw the American efforts for what they were. Once American resolve became clear, they had to fear for their very existence. Necessity required that they choose either war or surrender. In the end, they gave in, or perhaps one should say, caved in under the pressure. They did not so much conclude, “Better westernized than atomized.” Rather, they lost the gamble through which they aimed to reinvigorate themselves to realize the goal of their ambition. WHY THE WEST FOUGHT THE WAR The Americans were not less ruled by necessity. I do not emphasize ideological struggle. It has its significance (exclusively as a consequence of the nature of our regime). But human nature and not ideology is what submits men to the rule of necessity. Human beings are not free to reject war, the proof of which is the ubiquity of politics. Politics is the very expression of the necessity that humans have something to fight for and do so. No, I’m not among those who imagine that, without war, politics would have no end. To them, men having no reason to fear attack, they would never band together. Whether we employ “war” or “conflict of interest”—foreign war or civil war—the reasoning is the same. It may in fact be the case that no men are ever without war or the need to prepare for war. But might there not be, even in the presence of war, a reason for politics independent of war? Thucydides seemed to think so, for he took great notice of the different ways people live and the different aims they have for themselves regarding a way of life. That, I think, is the great necessity. Humans cannot retire from the task of seeking the human way of life. For that, they have no means other than politics. Politics—the city— means being a particular people, distinct from another. The very existence

104

George Washington

of another highlights the importance of the task itself and defines not the necessity of war, but the condition under which the necessity of war emerges. Applying Thucydides’ rule of necessity to our example, then, we must conclude that, with respect to the United States, the rule said nothing about the Soviet Union or even communism, in particular. That struggle resulted from historical accident—a different kind of necessity. It is well, therefore, to remember that the names of other states and systems would have replaced these in changed circumstances. Circumstances, perhaps, contribute far more to the selection of an enemy than do differences in political systems. For the United States, war with Britain was no less likely than war with the Soviet Union, if we consult only differences in political systems. But circumstances teach us much, and I’ve tried to adduce such examples above. Also instructive is the fact that, long before there were Soviets or even communists, no geopolitical prophecy was more common in the nineteenth century than the emergence of Russia and North America as the great rivals of the future. Such prophecies arose at a time when the two great military engines, Britain and France, were contesting the lordship of virtually the whole globe—France having been then such a power as the Soviet Union was in the twentieth century. Still, prophecies of a vastly different future were possible. Fisher Ames opened the century with such a prophecy. Tocqueville gave it its finest expression before midcentury. And Mahan closed the century with poignant reminders. The Bolshevik revolution came in 1918. What made such prophecies possible prior to the emergence of the ideological difference, it seems to me, is that these commentators consulted Thucydides’ rule of necessity, and it appears they did so correctly. I submit that the deliberations of any free society must depart from the same grounds. WHY WAR? A THUCYDIDEAN BASIS OF STATECRAFT What, then, does Thucydides mean by the rule of necessity? At one point he offers an interesting hint: men resent injustice more than violence. The one appears to them as rapine, because coming from an equal; the other but necessity, as coming from one stronger.3 According to Thucydides, in other words, men accept the rule of the stronger as necessary and independent of questions of right. We see, then, that questions of right, justice, and injustice take place within the horizon of necessity. The leading example of necessity in the Peloponnesian War was the true cause of the war, which Thucydides declared to be Sparta’s fear of Athens’ growing power. Once this fear took hold, Sparta could not avoid opening the war, although it suspected its own injustice in doing so. Men may resent injustice more than violence, but they seem to prefer doing injustice to

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

105

suffering violence. The question, therefore, is whether this is indeed a choice that humans face, of necessity? (cf. II, 63.) An alternative expression of the opposition between doing injustice or suffering violence is acting in accord with one’s will. Doing injustice is preferable to suffering violence, then, in the case in which doing injustice is the only means of acting in accord with one’s will. The other circumstance in which men act in accord with their will, peace, is when men are “better minded,” for they act by choice rather than under necessity (III, 82). The choice in the latter case, clearly, is choice that involves the possibility of consulting the good, the preferred deed rather than the necessary deed. One does not the less choose between doing injustice and suffering violence, but he is said to act under necessity when he is not at liberty to choose with reference to distant as opposed to “present occasions.” When all alternatives properly lie within the range of one’s will, only then does he truly choose. This is true of cities as of men. We find the classic statement of the rule of necessity in the Melian dialogue (VI, 84–116). For reasons internal to this chapter, however, it were well rather to glance at the speech of Diodotus, which led the Athenians to spare the lives of their revolted satellites, the Mytileneans. Diodotus maintained two points. First, the Athenians were not under a necessity to exact revenge from the Mytileneans, but were rather at liberty to consult their best interests. Second, he urged that they regard not the present but the future. The city’s deliberation, in short, affirmed that every alternative it faced in the case could accord with its will. Thus, its will, being undetermined, had to be enlightened by a true view of its interest. Didotus explained necessity as the power, nay the violence, of passion in reference to hope or hopelessness. What men desire, and either hope to have at modest cost or have no hope of living without having, moves them with all the power of necessity. So, too, with cities. Thus, crimes can be deterred neither by too mild nor by too stringent punishments. Moderation of the punishment is a means of playing the motivations, fear and profit, off one another, in order to assure one’s own both profit and safety. This gambit, Diodotus suggests, is open to those who are free to respect profit as well as fear. Finally, Diodotus counsels the city that the specific means of pursuing profit, as contrasted with the condition of doing so, is through deliberation upon the just and the unjust. The city that limits itself to dealing with other cities by means of violence, the right of the stronger, loses the capacity to favor justice and win gratitude. Because all cities comprise diverse interests and also men differently affected toward their antagonists, however the subject city may act, their citizens are always men deserving of different treatment because some citizens act justly and others unjustly toward the enemy. When “guilty and innocent alike” suffer the same fate, all become equally

106

George Washington

the enemies of the antagonist. Indeed, Diodotus argues, even the unjust, as men, who are otherwise friendly to the antagonist city deserve to be encouraged in their friendship so as to further the profit of the accusers. Not cities but men are guilty or not guilty. Necessity requires that cities be dealt with strictly in terms of profit. That could require that one city, free to do so, voluntarily suffer the injustices of men when doing so conduces to its profit. It is within a city’s right and in favor of its honor to destroy another city that injures it; and that means just and unjust men alike. But it is not to a city’s profit to do so when necessity does not compel it (III, 41–48). Diodotus, then, defines the rule of necessity as the consistent pursuit of the city’s true interest, from which no city is free to defalcate however certain it may be that doing so will lead it either to suffer or to impose violence on other cities. This true interest differs from the interests of individuals. It raises the possibility that the interests of individuals point toward a preference for something more than the safe quest of enjoyment, thus foreclosing the possibility for individuals merely to consult prospects for their own safety. Otherwise, the rule of necessity would lose its force. Still, because any city may deal with every other city as if the other city’s citizens need only consult their safety, or the opinion that they are safe, there is the further implication that the city that succeeds in foreclosing to its citizen the reflex of merely consulting their individual safety establishes itself as good beyond all other possibilities. Necessity, the rule of necessity, is bound up in the discovery that one city, our city, is good, while others are evil. What remains is to learn how men arrive at that conclusion from a beginning that emphasizes interests, indeed, self-interest. THE AMERICAN FOUNDING AND NATIONAL SECURITY The Federalist Papers describes the manner in which the idea of necessity comes to be distinguishable, though not separate, from interest.4 Their account closely resembles the results of Thucydides’ catalog of the allied forces in the Syracusan War, in which he distinguished motives for entering the war on grounds of compulsion and voluntary choice (“as profit or necessity severally chanced them,” VII, 57–58). The Federalist urges that the first line of necessity is for government itself (#2). From that (the existence of particular cities), there follows the possibility of “causes of war” in proportion to the number of states (#3). Thus, the American states, poised between becoming separate nations or a single nation, are admonished to consult the second line of necessity by forming a single entity in which all are at peace with one another rather by design than by chance.5 The Federalist maintains that a principal cause of war is desire for profit, and that free states are as liable to the push of that motivation as are unfree states. All states, therefore, “regard with uneasiness” the existence of any state in a position to obtain through strength the objects of its desires. The

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

107

“uniform course of human events” shows nations disposed to employ war as policy above the call for defense. Among infinitely many motivations to war, some move collective bodies: “Of this description are the love of power or the desire of preeminence and dominion—the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety” (#4–#6). The unjust and just alike, acting on what Thucydides called pretexts (which can only be grounded in their understanding of the opportunities or necessities of their circumstances), pose the specter of war as essential to the landscape of politics (#6). While “true interest” would counsel a “benevolent and philosophic spirit” in all nations, the operations of ordinary interests bar its reign (#6). The very factor that makes government necessary exposes the city itself to the rule of necessity. Men place their safety even above their liberty. “To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.” Still, they do not express the ardor for safety in anything other than the attempt to preserve their society, if not their government (#8). Following this introduction, The Federalist Papers demonstrate the architecture of the regime based squarely, if not wholly, on self-interest (#9). The argument is familiar, though curiously enough its conclusion is less so: The design aimed explicitly to make the interests into which the society would be sundered amenable to a constitutional order that would make the United States above all “one nation in respect to all other nations” (#42). The significance of this turn is that the individual interests, in one respect free, had to be innocuous, impotent in their influence on the operations of government. Thus, the Constitution, which liberated the pursuit of selfinterest, chained that pursuit to the protective umbrella of the Constitution itself. The interests were not permitted the liberty to retain their protection while simultaneously remaining open to every conceivable seduction. Nations pay little regard to rules and maxims calculated in their very nature to run counter to the necessities of society. Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions, that cannot be observed . . . every breach of the fundamental laws . . . forms a precedent for other breaches, where the same plea of necessity does not exist. (#25)

Full provision against foreign danger required confiding “to the federal councils” requisite power; that power prevailed over the society as over prospective enemies. With what colour of propriety could the force necessary for defense, be limited by those who cannot limit the force of offense? If a Federal Constitution could chain the ambitions or set bounds to the exertions of all other nations; then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set bounds to the

108

George Washington

exertions for its own safety . . . The means of security can only be regulated by the means and danger of attack. They will in fact be ever determined by these rules. (#41)

Internally, however, the Constitution does precisely this: It chains the ambitions and sets bounds to the exertions of all interests. This is how the Constitution succeeds in limiting its forces for offense, while it cannot limit the force for defense. The constitutional design intends a marriage or union of diverse interests in the pursuit of peace but one nonetheless capable of strong defense. Thus does it define the free society, as the defense of the “republican guaranty” reveals (#43). The interests, that is, the citizens, have had foreclosed all possibility to pursue alternative forms of safety—short of exercising the right of revolution. This absolute freedom for defense, based on the marriage of interests and presupposing the rule of necessity, is sometimes regarded as Machiavellian, because it does not extend internal constitutional guarantees to other nations. Noam Chomsky frequently offers such a charge, based on the notion that the free society is just like any other. A typical case: Typically, the “defense of the national interest” policy is disguised with highsounding rhetoric, which we dismiss with contempt when the official enemy “defends freedom and socialism” by sending tanks to Berlin, Budapest, Prague or Kabul, while solemnly reciting it when our own state acts in a similar way.6

I have shown above the manner in which Chomsky is correct, that all cities are in the same boat as to the rule of necessity. He failed to see, however, that the rule of necessity is not a justification, per se. Thus, he misses the distinction so carefully drawn in the Federalist between the free society and others. He does not understand how it is true that we are good, while they are evil. AND JUSTICE FOR ALL: WASHINGTON’S GUIDING POLICY To understand that latter point, alone, relieves the recognition of the rule of necessity from the charge of Machiavellianism. There is, however, but one full and fully conscientious response to that charge, at least in American experience. It is Washington’s Farewell Address. It requires patient analysis to discover the response, which is proved by the fact that the “Farewell” itself has not infrequently been charged with Machiavellianism: “A piece extolling ingratitude, showing it as a virtue necessary to the happiness of states, presenting interest as the only counsel which governments ought to follow in the course of their negotiations, putting aside honor and

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

109

glory.”7 Washington, on the other hand, understood himself to have defended principles of “justice and humanity.” It would be worthwhile to consider the case of this disparity in detail. The most significant commentary on the Farewell Address was published by Samuel Flagg Bemis in 1934.8 Bemis demonstrated how, in the midst of belligerent, overpowering states, the newly established, free republic of the United States wended a course designed to secure its liberty. He read the “Farewell” as an expression of Washington’s strategic conception, given the circumstances. As he argued, “To comprehend Washington’s point of view and feel the weight of his advice, it is necessary to consider the historical setting.” The point is well taken. A strong case can be made for taking the “Farewell” in context. It would be a mistake, however, to read the context too narrowly, as did Bemis. Bemis himself pointed out the striking fact that “the orthodox phrase Federal Union” occurs not once in the document. Washington preferred the more daring “National Union,” suggested in the critical essays of The Federalists.9 This is sufficient to suggest that the “immortal document” aimed beyond the immediate era of the 1790s, in which “federal union” was not only more natural but in some respects counseled by prudence. As companion to Bemis’s narrow view, then, I suggest a further approach, regarding the “Farewell” in its own terms. This reading explains the posture required of any free society, under any circumstances, in an unfree world (the French Minister, Adet, was that far correct). The address, however, is distinguished by Washington’s conviction of the possibility of an honorable policy. A theoretical consideration, as opposed to one simply historical, will respond to the charge of Machiavellianism, and also answer the question, how might a free society make consciousness of its goodness the instrument of its defense? THE FOREIGN POLICY OF REPUBLICANISM The Farewell Address sets forth a complete account of the work of founding a free society and the conditions of its preservation in a world that offers no sinecure for freedom. It was meant to be a complete account. Not only did it undergo manifold and massive preparations and alterations for a period of some thirteen or fourteen months over the space of four years, with the assistance of two of the nation’s finest minds, but it also provides specific indications of its completeness. In paragraph 5 Washington invokes his first inaugural address, in which he sets forth the ends of the government. And in paragraph 7 he invokes his 1783 “Circular Letter to the Governors upon the Disbanding of the Troops,” in which he urges the consummation of the modern revolution within the United States. In this manner, Washington makes those two

110

George Washington

crucial documents a part of the “Farewell.” Together, they give a complete account of the regime then being instituted in America. The importance of giving so complete an account in the “Farewell” may be learned from the claim that the free society required building. The principles of its architecture alone could provide the basis for judging the uses and practices to which it would be put. In this chapter it is not required so completely to analyze the founding of a free society. We are rather concerned with the conditions of its preservation. Thus, we will recur to the first inaugural and the Circular Letter only to a limited extent. But before undertaking the account of Washington’s version of the rule of necessity, it would be well to notice two aspects of significance in the discussion of the founding itself. First, in his first inaugural address, setting forth the ends of the government, Washington makes perhaps the most puzzling remark of his career. Referring to the “great assemblage of communities and interests” represented in the institution of the government, he discerned a pledge “that the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affection of its citizens and command the respect of the world.” When this rare, this daring repose on “private morality” is joined, as Washington joined it, to the call for a “national morality,” one experiences the full force of the paradox. If the foundations are “private morality,” what is the place of “national morality”? Can Washington expect to give to “national morality” the full force of “private morality”? In the same address Washington described the hand of God as “that Invisible Hand” that authors “every public and private good.” To merit the “propitious smiles” of the “Invisible Hand,” however, the nation must show regard for the “rules of order and right.” These rules establish a strict relationship, “in the economy and course of nature,” between “virtue and happiness” or “duty and advantage” and between “the genuine maxim of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.” Washington, in other words, regards the public good as the reward of “private morality,” as opposed to considering virtue a means to the end of the public good. The question becomes, what is the nature of the reward? Once might recall Bernard Mandeville’s seventeenth-century “private vices, public benefits.” Washington’s “private virtues, public benefit” is treated by him as a reward for private interests. How is it that “private morality” acquires this reward? It creates the conditions for a form of government that need not aim at virtue, that need not restrain individual interests by principles of command. That is the thrust of the remark in the “Farewell” that “public happiness” occasions virtue. The preeminence of free government stems from its immunity to resort to principles of command.

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

111

What, then, has this government to do? And whence arises “national morality,” if not from principles of command? These questions lead to the second significant aspect of the discussion of the founding, as Washington saw it, and demonstrate the difference between “private morality” and “national morality.” The order of the paragraphs in the Farewell Address constitutes ascending and descending scales that pivot on the central notion of the representatives bound by the Constitution. Twenty-five ascending paragraphs primarily describe limits on and dangers to the people’s power. While the limits and dangers are found in the nature of things, they correspond with an emphasis on the enormous influence and power of the founder in building the republic. The people’s initial impotence, a reflection of their own proclivities besides, parallels Washington’s initial power. Twenty-five descending paragraphs, while culminating in the praise of Washington’s deeds, primarily describe the conditions of preserving the republic, given the enormous and growing power of the people. Not only does the motion toward the founder’s withdrawal symbolize the eclipsing of his power by the people. These paragraphs also correspond to the actual emergence of the people as ruler. When Washington declared that the people need a national morality, he began the chain of arguments that show the effect of their love of being one people. The very first condition, an artificial rule of necessity, for the preservation of the republic is that the people preserve within themselves an equivalent to the founder’s prudent reason. Washington ultimately calls it “enlightened opinion” but initially, national morality. National morality is the means whereby a powerful people secure the pursuit of private morality. But national morality is less a code of conduct or principle of command than an habitual attitude toward the real rule of necessity. The people’s growing power parallels a diminution in the influence of Washington’s prudent reason, because they, as he once had, became capable of following duty over inclination. Bearing these aspects of the founding in mind, it becomes expeditious to analyze the “Farewell” in terms of the circumstances affecting a free society in an unfree world. The people are unable to read the rule of necessity. Nevertheless, their society is subject to it. In order to attain the needed degree of political dexterity recommended by Diodotus and Washington, they must employ rules of intercourse derived from and consistent with the principles by which they rule. The transcendent interest, the product of these principles, sets the tone of those rules of intercourse. It preserves the people’s liberty by setting limits to and authorizing the actions of representatives. It also preserves the nation’s liberty, which is nothing but as great a degree of freedom of action as necessity allows, by disallowing principles of supranational fidelity.

112

George Washington

The people’s independence of ties of fidelity is not rooted in Machiavellianism, or the ready will to do what serves one’s momentary interest. This is so because the transcendent interest is not allowed to be transient. Their independence, then, becomes an expression of the permanent quest for justice. It regards justice as incompatible with the subordination of the transcendent interest, and hence of the nation, to any other interest whatsoever. Reason, parties, and foreign interests are treated in identical terms: wills competing with the “will of the society.” The will of the society comes to mean nothing more than a free people’s interest in self-preservation as a people. Similarly, the term “nation’s will” comes to light as a purely technical term; it suggests that providing for a free people’s interest is achieved by means of regularized governmental operations. The free society deals with the rule of necessity by means of foreclosing to itself the option of redefining its interests. Its policy of strict impartiality is by definition nonimperial. It is not free to consider advancing its interest by means of permanent alliances or unions with others, since that raises the specter of redefining the transcendent interest and altering the “assemblage of communities and interests” on grounds incompatible with the “foundation of national policy.” In that respect, the French, who were wrong to criticize Washington in 1796, are quite justified in criticizing American policy at the World Forum for Democracy held in Poland in 2000. In doing so they echo the policy of Washington in 1793, enunciated in the “Proclamation of Neutrality,” which denied or canceled American obligations to France under the Treaty of Defense entered into during the Revolutionary War. Given the revolutions in France and importance of defending American interests, Washington was justified. Similarly, if French fears of the course of American hegemony are reasonable, then the French are justified to resist improvident pressures toward global democracy. The free society’s pursuit of its interest, guided by justice, is dependent upon the assurance of its safety. That means assuring the freedom to choose peace or war. To do so, the free society must become the agent of necessity vis-a`-vis others, rather than being forced to suffer it (as in the Melian dialogue). Washington implies that the tragedy of political life (which inheres in foreclosing supranational fidelity) may be resolved, insofar as the choice that is required is compatible with the end in view. But this requires a political dexterity that democracy may not command—or does it? The problem is to avoid unnecessary claims on public faith; it arises from the fact that the claims, which a Machiavellian policy could dispense with easily, are enforced in a free society by the requirements of the regime itself (which mainly means through the agency of public opinion). A free people, therefore, is not capable of the treachery of Alcibiades.10 A free people must preserve their constitution above all. Necessity, however, is no respecter of constitutions. This is the reason it is necessary to

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

113

surmount necessity as far as possible. The avoidance of regime changes under necessity is not less important than avoiding speculative regime changes. Those imposed by necessity, however, are evitable only to the degree the rule of necessity does not turn itself against the free society. The Spartans endured the worst of ills, change of regime, by reason of the necessity that made it Athens’ enemy. The war closed with Sparta in command of an empire its regime could not sustain without change. It changed. The life of a people, therefore, is a life of cares, dangers, and labors. They traverse the snares of an unfree world—where all comes at cost—by means of right, duty, and interest. Washington’s symmetries can be mesmerizing. A free people require, and may consult, their right. For it is manifest in the impotence of other states to deny their claims. They require to follow duty, which is to savor peace and to defend their just claims wherever they may be threatened. And they require to pursue interest, which is above all the preservation of the free society. The care expended on this goal will reconcile particular interests to the interest of free society. The labor required for its successful completion will be determined both by the rule of necessity and by the constitution of the regime. The people will have every chance to keep their constitution, if they once receive it whole through the initial dangers. Otherwise, they can never be quite certain of the goodness of their way of life. The fate of Carthage is perhaps the best example of a people who lacked any cause to identify their interests with the goodness of their way of life. Before Carthage was effaced from the face of the earth, the Carthaginians had occasion to reflect on the value of the city to their respective lives. Montesquieu considered the Washingtonesque but doomed efforts of Hannibal to give them a whole constitution.11 How could that city have preserved itself? he asked. Hannibal, the praetor, sought to stop the magistrates from pillaging the republic. And what did they do? They went to arraign him before the Romans. “Unfortunate ones, who wanted to be citizens without that there might be a city!” In sum, the rule prior to the rule of necessity identified by Rood is a people’s recognition of its own way as good, and deserving defense against all dangers. That, in turn, leads to insistence upon the rule of law in security policy (and fosters even oxymorons, such as the “international community”). Where a people’s way admits no transcending interest, the course of policy is plain. It is founded not upon deliberating distinctions of good and evil but upon distinguishing forms of safety necessary to the free society. George Washington made this implicit rule explicit, and in doing so he provided enduring guidance for the foreign policy of a republican regime.

114

George Washington

APPENDICES For the sake of convenience, I attach two appendices. The first is a re´sume´ of the Farewell Address, keyed to the actual paragraphs of the Addendum, and substituting sentences for each of Washington’s fifty-one paragraphs. Some few sentences will be more cumbersome than I could have desired, but faithful to the argument. That is followed by a second appendix, a brief commentary designed to clarify the terms of Washington’s argument. These may serve as references for the interpretation provided in the text. Appendix A has been modified from the original version so that each sentence is numbered to correspond both to the paragraphs in the “Farewell” and to the commentary in Appendix B.

APPENDIX A Washington’s “Farewell”: A Re´sume´ 1. The period for a new election to the presidency is drawing near, and Washington chooses to further the public’s deliberation by declaring his unavailability. 2. Having carefully considered every implication, he judges this the path of duty as well as inclination. 3. Heretofore duty has always compelled inclination, as in the case when the critical posture of “our affairs with foreign nations” prevented his retirement in 1792. 4. At this juncture, the people’s “external and internal” concerns are compatible with releasing him. 5. He had explained in his first inaugural address the end that he had in view and now retires thinking that he has succeeded. 6. He is grateful for the success of “your” efforts and wishes that “your union” and “brotherly affection” may be perpetual; so that the free constitution that is the work of “your hands” may be sacredly maintained; and so that “the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty,” may be made complete by “so prudent a use of this blessing.” 7. He should stop on this note, save that, desiring “the permanency” of “your happiness as a people,” he offers some disinterested advice similar to that he urged when disbanding the army in 1783. 8. Liberty is secure in the hearts of the people and does not require his encouragement. 9. Further, the “unity of government which constitutes you one people” now “is dear to you,” but while, mainly, securing the promise of the preamble, it is also the point most vulnerable to the attacks of enemies, foreign and domestic; thus, a correct estimate of the value of “national union” is fundamental to

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

115

private and public happiness, to be considered the sacred cause of “your political safety and prosperity,” ever to be defended. 10. “Sympathy and interest” should move the people to this, as their common country ought to “concentrate your affections,” elevating America beyond ordinary appellations. 11. Considerations of interest alone, however, are still more compelling. 12. One region feeds and sups at the prosperity of another, wedded in “an indissoluble community of interests as one nation.” 13. Assembled thus, all find greater safety from foreign dangers while simultaneously minimizing the need for dangerous military establishments. 14. By itself the benefit from the prospect of union should authorize the experiment in governing “so large a sphere” by means of free government. 15. Sectionalism, a tool of destruction serving the interests of party, can undermine this collective strength, making aliens “of those who ought to be bound by fraternal affection.” 16. Your union requires an effective government, chosen by you, upon due deliberation and on principles of liberty; it is erected on the strength of the people’s right to make and alter their constitutions, “the fundamental maxim of liberty,” which claims from the people respect for the authority of government and obedience to its laws. 17. Political undertakings that interfere with the “regular deliberation and action” of this government destroy its fundamental principle and provide artificial scope and energy for the influence of faction, effectively substituting the independent “will of a party” for the settled “will of the nation.” 18. Such parties may occasionally amplify the public choice, but will ultimately serve the “unprincipled” in overthrowing the people. 19. Just as individual happiness requires the Union, and the permanency of the Union requires an effective government, so, too, the preservation of government calls for resistance to “irregular oppositions” to its authority and for rejection of specious amendments. (Governments, like other human institutions, build their character through time and habit, and the people must not hazard that vigor that provides a “perfect security of liberty.”) “Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.” 20. Apart from the danger of sectionalism, there is a broader threat in factionalism. 21. The spirit of faction cannot be excised, as it springs from the profoundest “passions of the human mind,” and it assumes its worst form, and opposes its worst threat to human happiness, in popular government. 22. Government by means of alternating recriminatory intolerance produces horrors of despotism that are ameliorated only by the ascent of a permanent, absolute despotism.

116

George Washington

23. These are the extremes that are visible in the embryos of party strife. 24. Such strife introduces impurities into public councils, subjecting the “policy and will” of the country to the independent “policy and will” of some members only or of a foreign power. 25. The prevailing idea that parties “keep alive the spirit of liberty” in free countries is true to the very degree constitutions incline more toward unfree forms, whereas in popular government the spirit of party is too apt to prevail and ought to be restrained. 26. Similarly, officers of government ought to be restrained to constitutionally defined paths of endeavor, to which they will be held because the people’s habits of thinking require it; officers ought to endure even incapacity or imbecility in office rather than effect any change by other than prescribed modes. 27. Finally, the people, who must guard the sanctity of their constitution ought to provide themselves with the religious and moral habits necessary to sustain a “national morality,” and thus to rule the conditions of public service, or the tie between “public and private felicity” will perish. 28. It is true “substantially,” that virtue or morality is a “necessary spring of popular government.” 29. Public opinion, therefore, insofar as “the structure of government gives force” to it, ought to be “enlightened”; knowledge should be generally diffused and institutions promoted for the purpose. 30. Public opinion, reconciled to the necessities of civil order and future peace, must sustain the power of government to preserve public credit, spare debt to future generations, and supply revenue sufficient to the purposes of government. 31. Our virtue, occasioned by our public happiness, constitutes the ground of just relations with other states—an experiment “to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence”—in which, free, enlightened, and (“at no distant period”) great, we follow “every sentiment which ennobles human nature” while hoping that its vices won’t discountenance the experiment. 32. Key to a policy based on this principle is the aversion to all “habitual hatred” or “habitual fondness” for any other nation, which should remove slight causes of conflict. 33. As antipathies compel policies, so, too, do “passionate attachments” create “the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists”; it gives rise to unequal treatment of similarly situated states; and it allows the corrupt at home to betray their nation under the cover of popularity. 34. These are but so many avenues to foreign intrigue, which alarm the “enlightened and independent patriot.” 35. “History and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government” and counsel popular jealousy against foreign

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

117

insidiousness—an impartial jealousy, unaffected for one or another and itself proof against foreign wiles. 36. The great rule of our conduct in foreign relations is extensive commercial connections and contracted political connections. 37. Europe’s primary interests only concern us at this juncture; her frequent wars are foreign to our interests and we must not become implicated in them. 38. Our geopolitical situation authorizes us “to pursue a definite course”; building our might as a united people, we might ultimately “defy material injury from external annoyance,” when we may “choose peace or war, as our interests, guided by justice, shall counsel.” 39. Why should we lose this prospect, only to “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition”? 40. “Honesty is the best policy,” but let us hold to an absolute minimum the number of cases in which foreign states may exercise any claim to our fidelity. 41. Let us provide adequate defenses, and temporary alliances will serve our needs in “extraordinary emergencies.” 42. “Policy, humanity, and interest” all conspire to urge “harmony” and “liberal intercourse” with all nations: harmony cannot be commanded so much as induced by means of careful regard to advance the aims of an evenhanded policy, even a commercial policy; for “disinterested favors” exceed the powers of nations—no error is greater than “to calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.” 43. In offering these counsels “I dare not hope” that “they will prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations”; it suffices for Washington to “moderate” the ills that the nation would otherwise experience in their full force. 44. The deeds of Washington’s public service will serve to measure his adherence to these principles, but he attests that he fully intends to follow them. 45. The cornerstone of his view is manifest in the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality. 46. He found that right, duty, and interest combined to justify the Proclamation; therefore, he maintained it with fortitude. 47. In the place of describing, urging the right, it were sufficient to note that the belligerents conceded it. 48. The duty may be deduced from the requirement of “justice and humanity” that, necessity permitting, each nation should “maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity toward other nations.” 49. The people, he thought, would best recall how their interests justified his course in office, but he nursed the design of assuring the country’s ultimate capacity to rule its own fate, to pursue its interests without let or hindrance. 50. Washington’s errors were unintended, and he would have God vouchsafe their insignificance, while the people considered them less momentous than his services.

118

George Washington

51. Thus he retires, to enjoy in the company of his fellow citizens the “benign influence of good laws under a free government,” his constant aim, and the fit reward of “our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”

APPENDIX B Commentary (1) Washington’s opening paragraph acknowledges his consciousness of the preemptive role he played in the political life of the founding—contrasting strongly with his self-deprecatory acceptance of the initial election mandate. Public deliberation, the essence of free government, will not proceed freely for so long as any chance of his own ruling remains. (2) On the same grounds, he assures the people that his action is thoughtful, reflecting the counsel of duty as well as inclination. (3) This is the first time in the founding when such agreement has reigned; the first time Washington was free was when he could declare his people free. (4) The people are free not only in formal terms but by a happy concatenation of their affairs, (5) leading to ends that Washington had specifically set forth upon his first inauguration. (6) The people’s freedom can only be understood as the result of their own efforts, raising a question as to Washington’s specific contribution. To disentangle his own responsibility from that of the people seems to involve disentangling the free constitution from the conditions for its preservation. (7) Else, he would have no further need to speak. Now, however, as he had in 1783, he judges the people in some danger with respect to which they do not seem especially alert. (8) Washington is not responsible for the people’s love of liberty, (9) but has contributed to their love of being one people. The former is the foundation of the free society, but the latter is the means of preserving the free society against foreign and domestic assault. He goes further: the love of being one people is above all the cause of the people’s “political safety and prosperity.” (10) The people must vaunt their particularism, the love of the American, to give assurance to individual liberty. Forces of “sympathy and interest” suggest this course. (11) Interest in itself, however, rational self-interest, suffices to justify this course. (12) The diverse interests of Americans from differing regions and occupations prosper most when nurtured in the national community. (13) Thus united, they can provide greater safety from foreign danger, while also controlling the need to resort to defensive forces vis-a`-vis one another. Without the national community, in other words, not only are they prey to outsiders, but those self-same interests serve to divide them. The power of rational self-interest changes with changing political circumstances. (14) The benefits of wresting concord from interests subject to discord—heightened prosperity and safety—authorize the experiment of free government on a large scale. Whose experiment is it, the people’s or the founders’? (15) The people’s liability to emphasize their interests as principles of difference rather than community hints that they are not wholly aware of the nature of the experiment. The founders, responsible for forging e pluribus unum, own this experiment of defeating alienation among the citizens and denying to party this “tool of destruction.” (16) The people require, the experiment requires, a government compatible at once with

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

119

the people’s responsibility and that of Washington. While the government must provide assurance to liberty, it must also be constructed on principles of liberty, on the people’s right of revolution. The government will exercise only such power as the people condescend to suffer; they owe it to themselves to suffer it gladly. (17) The right of revolution, “a fundamental maxim of liberty,” has its full influence only when the operations of government are regularized, follow channels. Otherwise, given irregular patterns or exercising of political power, it can never be certain against what, or whom, the right of revolution may be exercised. Parties or factions external to the branches of government compete with the nation’s will. (18) The public opinion, which might sometimes be expressed by means of external parties, receives no guarantee of regular, faithful expression by this mechanism. They may become instruments of oppression or subversion. (19) With this argument Washington has created the basis for a political definition of liberty. Liberty is expressed by means of the very operations of government, when they are regular and based on habitual expectations rooted in the people’s love of liberty. The character that government will acquire through time is nothing less than development of the power to, and the expectation that it will, confine individuals to the pursuit of rational self-interest, “enjoyment of the rights of person and property.” The developed character of the government resists the impulse to apply the right of revolution, to refound, and hence substitutes the rule of law, the nation’s will, for the rule of raw interest. (20) The government itself is threatened by interested partisanism, as the community of interest is. (21) The “spirit of faction”—Washington still means an emphasis on interests as differentiating rather than uniting—is native to the “human mind.” The love of one’s own, the particular, does not merely, or even primitively, refer to the city or country. In fact, the struggle to make the city everyone’s own, the founders’ aim, almost seems a mismatch. For the greater scope that popular government affords to the expression of one’s loves but heightens the prospect of interests conflicting with the community of interests that sustain the government. To Washington, what undermines popular government undermines human happiness. (22) The alternative to popular government—to the love of the community of interests—is that men and their parties take turns using one another for their own ends. (23) The differences among parties always reflect at least the germ of these extremes; or, what makes parties in fact parties is that their aims, like their interests, are by definition mutually exclusive. (24) But no community can recognize interests mutually exclusive within itself without thereby diluting, poisoning, its wholeness. It can have no will; its voice will always speak the will of another, whether a mere part of the community or some power external to it. It is possible neither to love, nor to defend, a city that has no voice, that is a city only in name. (25) Washington’s argument begins to become clear as it approaches its center from the twenty-fifth paragraph. He chose to speak of the people’s power, their responsibility, as a means of continuing the practical task of defining the republic and carving out its space in the world. The crucial definition is not, as we might expect, the Constitution; it is rather that transcendent sense of difference, distinguishing one city from another, that serves to obscure if not eliminate the very real differences among men within the city. The particular city seems to be as far as mankind are able to go in the work of eliminating the power of interest as an

120

George Washington

obstacle to human happiness, even when one’s efforts are based on universal principles and the counsels of interest. While parties may “keep alive the spirit of liberty,” their power to do so is inversely proportional to the degree of liberty that the constitution supports. In that sense, the people’s liberty is better defined in terms of political opportunities than in terms of an obstinate insistence upon rights. (26) Restraint of parties, as obstacles to a community of interests, goes hand in hand with restraint of governing officials. Their respect for constitutional demarcations is, in fact, but a concession to the ruling force of public opinion and to the opportunity that the people exercise jointly to determine the form of political power even at the expense of substance. (27) The people enjoy this opportunity not as a result of their liberty, for which they are responsible, but as a result of their “national morality,” for which the founders are responsible in the first instance. On the strength of this transcendent expression of interest they are able to marry “public and private felicity.” (28) “Virtue or morality” does not tell the whole story of the motive principle of republican government. It does in large measure serve to provide its necessary motion, however. (29) While the aim of this government is human happiness, the public opinion that its structure enthrones conduces to the end only when it is nurtured in principles of decency based on the transcendent expression of interest. (30) Stated in practical terms: civil order and future peace are subject to necessities to which public opinion must be reconciled, else government will lack such ordinary powers, even, as that of raising sufficient revenues. (31) This might suggest an instrumental account of virtue. That virtue, however, becomes possible only in the presence of “public happiness,” or the consummation, before heralded, of a transcendent expression of interests. Thus, the virtue that preserves the power of government is at the same time the expression of principles of humanity and civilization as the basis of the people’s relationships with all other peoples. The consummation of a transcendent expression of interests makes it possible for America to deal with others, not on considerations of mere interest, but on the basis of sentiments “which ennoble human nature.” This must work as follows: the people, whose opinion must rule but will do so only insofar as they repress the sense of interests as differentiating, will in turn regard other peoples not in light of their lesser interests but rather in light of their transcendent interests. Their mutual relations will not be as parties within a whole, but rather as distinct, self-sufficient wholes. This will be the case, at least, if the power of human nature, with respect to its vices (the sense of interests as differentiating, alienating), does not overwhelm the perspective of transcendent interest when it operates outside of the protective shadow of constitutional habit. (32) The foreign policy that would be consistent with this outlook would deny that there are ever grounds for “habitual hatred” or “habitual fondness” between this nation and others, since the lesser human interests do not determine that policy. (33) A nation, above all, a free people, is not free to treat another nation as its own, a thing that, if it could happen, would create obstacles to public happiness as great as those that private interests pose to private happiness. To imagine that another city can be one’s own, as one’s fellow citizen is, creates an “imaginary common interest” where “no real common interest exists.” It introduces injustice in foreign relations, but, still more, threatens the true transcendent interest of one’s own city, for the imaginary common interest, to be secured, would impose the

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

121

necessity of obscuring the interest of one’s own city. (34) It is clear, therefore, that such an illusion does no more than create an opportunity for those who are not comprehended by one’s own city to undermine its transcendent interest and hence weaken its authority over lesser interests. (35) Washington resorts to those ubiquitous teachers, “history and experience,” for the only time in the essay, as if to underscore the universal force of this account of particularism. What all men say and do, saith Aristotle, is true. To Washington, impartiality toward all foreign cities is the obverse of the consistent preference for one’s own. (36) A foreign policy of impartiality toward foreign cities—not to be confused with mere neutrality—one based on an equal readiness to harm or benefit any other state as circumstances require, is a thing unheard of. What kind of policy would it produce? One based on interests, Washington answers: extensive commercial connections and the narrowest political connections. That is, (37), a foreign policy based on secondary interests, since “Europe’s primary interests” concern America but remotely at the close of the eighteenth century. (38) How might “Europe’s primary interests” ever concern America? Only as necessity, the threat to America’s existence, might make a political connection the means of defense. But the absence of such necessity at the close of the eighteenth century creates a necessity of its own: that America may so strengthen herself as to be ever independent of political connections for her defense. That eventuality would make permanent the aim of pursuing the course of humanity in foreign relations; that is, America could pursue her own interests, “guided by justice.” The nation is at liberty to make justice its guide in choosing “peace or war” to the degree that it suffers no compulsion in regard to the safety of its citizens. (39) Then is the morality required for its preservation not a burden upon its shoulders. (40) It is preferable that public faith, honesty, never be sacrificed to expediency. But the nature of political life is such that sacrifice is avoidable only to the degree a city is parsimonious in pledging its faith. (41) It must do so only under the rule of necessity, relying primarily on the adequacy of its own defenses to assure its liberty in a world that offers no political guarantees for a city’s liberty. (42) “Disinterested favors,” or, which is the same, a common interest among states, exceed the powers of nations. Washington offers a political definition of self-sufficiency for the city. (43) Having completed the account of America’s place in the world, Washington disclaims the sin of utopianism. No nation may be permanently exempted from the rule of necessity. Its counsels, however prudent, may aim to place it in the best position to submit to that rule with hope of profiting by the result. Necessity has no respect for constitutions. The chief ill necessity occasions is the loss of a constitution, and thereby the express hope of assuring human happiness. If the city can succeed in moderating the ills necessity imposes, whatever else befalls the city, it would presumably preserve its free constitution. (44) Washington appealed to his deeds in closing, as he appealed to his speeches in opening the address, as serving to affirm the degree of his success in pursuing these principles. But pursue them he did, in speech and deed. The relation between the two is that only the latter, vitiated by chance and the very necessity he sought to manage, will demonstrate how the end inheres in the principles. (45) He indicates the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality as his central deed. In that, he refused to come to the aid of France against Britain, though a plausible reading of the 1778 Treaty

122

George Washington

of Alliance seemed to require it. According to Washington, that treaty served its purpose in the Revolutionary War; without it America may have died aborning. But the refusal to apply it in France’s hour of need in 1793 also served its purpose; it both preserved the fragile, infant republic from ravages of war, which may have been fatal to it, and preserved to it British commerce, which was vital for it. The breaking, as the plighting, of faith preserved the transcendent interests of the United States. (46) Washington justified this deed by evoking the evidence of “right, duty, and interest.” (47) As to right, however, he claimed that, since the belligerents acknowledge it, he need not develop it. That seems to mean that they recognized the standards of their own deeds in the Proclamation, whatever the unique character of a free constitution might require. (48) The duty was nothing less than the teaching of peace, deducible from “justice and humanity.” This teaching urges “relations of peace and amity” with every state, whatever their circumstances, for as long as necessity allows. In fact, then, Washington derived the duty from the fact that necessity either did not compel the United States to fight, as he might say, or rather compelled the United States not to fight. (49) As to interest, Washington indulges the sole, intentional ambiguity of the essay. One might imagine that interest is nothing other than the pedestrian name for duty, as that has just been described. But Washington means something yet different, and also different from right. First, he tells the people that they would best remember the interests that justified his courses. The implication is that the Proclamation satisfied their interests. British commerce was already implied. It had the obverse of American navigation and agriculture, among other things. There was West Indian trade as well, and the vital navigation of the Mississippi at stake (which Washington especially considered before deciding, not whether to uphold the treaty, but whether to join with Britain against France or remain neutral), and other discrete, lesser interests. In all this, what is striking is that it seems unlikely that he expects the people to remember the transcendent interest, which his address labors to develop. By allowing the people, as opposed to himself, to supply a view of ordinary interests as justifying his course, Washington does not claim responsibility for the appeal to that justification. By doing so, he reminds us of the earlier need to disentangle the people’s responsibility for the free constitution from Washington’s responsibility for their “love of being one people.” Then, he describes the need to wrest concord from interests subject to discord. The particular interests to which the people might appeal to justify his Proclamation were just the sort as were subject to discord, and certainly not all agreed in finding their profit from British trade. It is also true that, at the time of the Proclamation, Washington was responding to substantial public fervor on behalf of the French “Republic.” That was the error of the rise of the pro-French, democratic societies. The people, then, knew their particular interests and, as yet, but dimly perceived their transcendent interest, which would have counseled impartiality. The people were not wholly aware of the nature of their experiment in free government. Washington was. Thus, he offers a different justification, in light of interest, for his Proclamation of Neutrality. He had a design, he admitted, to assure the country’s capacity to rule its own fate, pursue its own interest. That design depended on two things. The country needed time to build strength sufficient to

The Foreign Policy of Republicanism

123

pursue its interests freely. But second, it also needed to discover the interest it had as a country, its transcendent interest. The ambiguity in Washington’s account stems from the fact that the interest that justified his course, to him, was not altogether compatible with the interests that justified it to the people. The latter, however, did contribute to the justification, inasmuch as they provided the necessary condition for Washington’s pursuit of the former. (50) Having admitted so much, Washington closes the address boldly. He reminds the people of his customary self-deprecation. He must have committed some errors, but he prays to God that they be held to little consequence. In any case, however, he would have the people, as distinct from God, regard them as insignificant compared to his successes. (51) Thus, it is on a self-congratulatory note that he retires: His people are happy, and so is he. The experiment was complete, affording Washington the opportunity to enjoy the reward of his and his people’s “mutual cares, labors, and dangers.” Mutual cares, labors, and dangers are appropriate only in the circumstances of a common interest—a transcendent interest.

NOTES 1. Harold W. Rood, Kingdoms of the Blind: How the Great Democracies Have Resumed the Follies that so Nearly Cost Them Their Life (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1980), pp. xv, 294. 2. I have discussed the implications of “citizenship” in detail in a separate essay, “The Truth about Citizenship: An Outline,” Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 4, no. 2 (Summer 1996), pp. 355–372. 3. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1, p. 77. 4. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (numerous editions available, but the numbers used herein corresponding to the Cooke edition, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961). 5. This argument is presented in detail in Part II, “The Constitutionalism of The Federalist Papers,” in W. B. Allen (with Kevin A. Cloonan), The Federalist Papers: A Commentary “The Baton Rouge Lectures” (New York: Peter Lang, Inc.), 2000. 6. Wall Street Journal 24 (June 1981), p. 11. 7. Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791–1797, ed. Frederick Jackson Turner, Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1903, p. 954. I have provided a full explanation of the counter-Machiavellian tendency of the American founding, or at least Washington’s founding, in “Machiavelli and Modernity,” in trans. and ed. Angelo Codevilla, The Prince by Niccolo` Machiavelli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 8. Samuel Flagg Bemis, Washington’s Farewell Address: A Foreign Policy of Independence (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934), pp. 250–268; reprinted from The American Historical Review 39, no. 2 (January 1934). Includes bibliographical references. A recent commentary significantly advances Bemis’s work, and particularly expands upon the fundamental principles underlying the politics of the “Farewell Address”: Matthew Spalding and Patrick J. Garrity, A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character

124

George Washington

(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. xviii, 216. Includes bibliographical references and index. 9. Cf., W. B. Allen, Part I, Commentary. 10. Cf. Thucydides, V, 45–46. 11. Charles de Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, III, 3.

7 Washington’s Leadership: Prudence and the American Presidency Ethan Fishman

In the third century B.C. Aristotle used the term “prudence” to describe the strategy of decision making that he associated with effective political leadership. In order to practice classical prudence, Aristotle argued, leaders must possess “knowledge of the correct ends or values as well as . . . calculation of the correct means to these ends.”1 In other words, they must be eternal balancers: seeking to reconcile ideals with the sometimes nasty facts of life; striving to establish an equilibrium between expecting too much and accepting too little from politics; struggling to translate morally preferable ideals into politically feasible policies. One of the anomalies of contemporary presidential research is that many scholars have ignored classical Western prudence in their evaluations of the office and the people who have inhabited it.2 This neglect has occurred not because classical prudence is considered to be such an obvious political talent that it doesn’t deserve close scrutiny, but because many scholars of the presidency usually have not shared its assumptions about reality and human nature. Aristotle assumed that reality is composed primarily of transcendent immaterial ideals and, to a lesser extent, of transitory material representations of these ideals. He also assumed that human life represents a dramatic struggle between our souls, which are immaterial and connect us to forever, and our bodies, which help us get through today. The neglect of classical prudence is mistaken because our greatest Presidents exercised prudential leadership to guide us through the greatest crises

126

George Washington

in our history. Their successes were based on an ability to adapt American ideals to existing circumstances. During the Founding the preeminent issue was whether republicanism could avoid anarchy, the historic plague of popular governments, and resist falling prey to tyranny. Washington’s legacy is a presidency that is capable of providing leadership without interfering with the integrity of popular sovereignty. Lincoln fought the Civil War to remind Americans that their republic could not survive while living a lie. Having been founded upon the principle that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, he maintained, the United States must either evolve toward that goal or succumb eventually to its own perfidy. The Great Depression put American laissez-faire politics on trial. Roosevelt taught that the public interest of the United States today requires more centralized political authority for its protection than even Washington and Lincoln could have imagined. Each of their presidencies reflected Edmund Burke’s famous statement: To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide: it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.3

Each of their presidencies was marked by a successful effort to impart moral vision and rational direction to American politics. Their failures took place when they temporarily went blind and lost their way. Washington’s error in the “Whiskey Rebellion” was that he sought to attain moral and rational ends through immoral and irrational means. Lincoln’s and Roosevelt’s plans to deport former slaves and intern Japanese-Americans ignored morality altogether. Roosevelt did not emphasize morality enough in his treatment of European Jews and African Americans. PRUDENCE Aristotle introduced the concept of prudence, or phronesis, to Western culture in the third century B.C. He applied the term to political behavior he admired and considered to be eminently successful. What he found most admirable about this behavior was its ability to convert morally preferable ideals into politically feasible policies. He called this talent “prudence,” which he defined as “calcula(tion) . . . for the attainment of a particular end of a fine sort.”4 Aristotle expanded on his definition of prudence in Book VI of his Ethics. There he distinguished between the theoretical and practical forms of reason and the intellectual and moral talents that each employs. Theoretical

Washington’s Leadership

127

reason and the intellectual talents, he wrote, apply to such subjects as metaphysics and mathematics that are learned in abstract for their own sake. Practical reason and the moral talents, on the other hand, apply to subjects such as ethics and politics that derive from life experiences and involve knowledge of the noblest human motives for the sake of noble action. Aristotle considered prudence to be the consummate moral talent because of its ability to realize abstract ends through concrete means available to human beings so that they might do the right thing to the right person at the right time. In order to meet the standards of prudence, he maintained, political leaders are required to do their very best to create policies that prevent the subversion of moral ideals even under the direst circumstances. The prudent leader aims high but accepts less when his efforts invariably fall short of the mark. He never gives up hope for a better world even as he respects the obstacles to such hope. He expects neither too little nor too much from the politics he practices. Aristotle’s treatment of entrenched plutocratic and tyrannical governments in Book V of his Politics illustrates how he expects the prudent politician to operate. He cannot justify rule by the rich because he realizes that governing well is not directly related to acquiring money. Tyranny represents the antithesis of political justice to him because it elevates the self-interest of the tyrant over the public good. The strategy he will employ to reform these regimes involves exploiting the greed that underlies them. He warns plutocrats and tyrants that their refusal to share power will result ultimately in their violent overthrow and death. Through his actions he does not expect to create virtuous rulers out of corrupt ones. Rather, recognizing that wholesale political change in the case of entrenched plutocracies and tyrannies may be neither feasible, because the rulers control all sources of power, nor advisable, because the alternative may be worse than the status quo, he employs his energies to move the regimes closer, if only by millimeters, to the ideal of a just state. In order to understand the meaning of classical prudence, we may compare it to idealism, cynicism, and pragmatism, attitudes that are based on different philosophical assumptions about reality and human nature. Classical prudence assumes that reality consists primarily of transcendent immaterial ideals and, to a lesser extent, of transitory material representations of these ideals. To Aristotle, for example, the reality of a square is based on a perfect universal definition that is imperfectly realized in material squares that are never absolutely true. Prudence also assumes that human beings are qualitatively different from all other living things because we possess a soul that gives us the power to comprehend transcendence and choose between right and wrong. “It is the peculiarity of man, in comparison with the rest of the animal world,” Aristotle wrote, “that he alone possesses a perception of good and evil, of the just and unjust, and of other similar qualities.”5 From this perspective,

128

George Washington

human existence represents a dramatic struggle between our immortal souls, which inspire us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and our bodily instincts, which conspire to convince us to love ourselves alone. Indeed, it was because Aristotle entertained no illusions about the ability of the flesh to undermine even the most basic standards of common decency that he stressed the importance of ideals in his views of reality and human nature. As imperfect creatures, he taught, we must at least strive for moral perfection through rational control of our animal passions if we want to achieve some degree of personal happiness and some measure of social justice. To reach a satisfactory level of fulfillment, he wrote, we ought “so far as in us lies, to put on immortality and to leave nothing unattempted in the effort to live in conformity with the highest thing within us.”6 The idealistic politician, on the other hand, believes reality is composed completely of intangible ideals. He has a very high opinion of human nature and insists on doing the theoretically right thing, right here, right now regardless of the practical consequences. He would excoriate Aristotle’s plutocrats and tyrants, and foment rebellion. In the end, he would be killed and his followers subjected to even graver injustices by a paranoid regime. The cynic takes an altogether different approach to politics. He does not believe in universal ideals, denies that qualitative differences exist between human beings and other living things, and is remorselessly selfish. The cynic would initially fawn on the plutocrats and tyrants by providing counsel on how they could further consolidate their power. Having firmly established himself in their good graces, he might later advise them to initiate a policy of “bread and circuses,” which he would arrange to administer, thereby gaining sufficient power among the poor and disenfranchised to frighten the leaders into sharing power with him. The pragmatist reverses the relationship between universal ideals and material circumstances found in classical prudence. He stresses moral principles less than idealists and proponents of classical prudence but more than cynics. He has a higher opinion of human nature than cynics and proponents of classical prudence but lower than idealists. The pragmatist seeks immediate tangible benefits through effective use of the means at hand. Rather than warn the plutocrats and tyrants of the inevitable consequences of injustice, he might seek to persuade them to undertake certain civic improvements as monuments to their rule, thereby promoting the public good while ensuring his own favor among the powerful. Classical prudence can also be differentiated from cultural relativism and ideology. Since classical prudence posits the existence of universal ideals, it repudiates the claims made by relativists that all values are culturally biased, artificial, and counterfeit. Aristotle thus would have been unable to accept the proposition offered by Thomas Hobbes in 1651 that words such as “good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any

Washington’s Leadership

129

common rule of good or evil, to be taken from the nature of the subjects themselves.”7 Since the function of classical prudence is to reconcile transitory political issues with transcendent political standards, it rejects ideological thinking for advancing one doctrinaire solution to every problem regardless of the situation. Proponents of classical prudence thus cannot be socialists, capitalists, or feminists. From the perspective of classical prudence, relativists, who discount forever, and ideologues, who neglect today, appear to have engineered simplified, one-dimensional versions of politics based on reductionist views of reality and human nature. The attitude of classical prudence toward relativism and ideology is exhibited in Edmund Burke’s thought. Echoing Aristotle, he maintained that the primary purpose of politics is to bring “power and right” into harmony.8 Against the ideologues of the eighteenth century, Burke, who called prudence “the first of all virtues,”9 reiterated Aristotle’s admonition about the political unsuitability of theoretical reason and the intellectual faculties. When abstract ideals are applied to government in a raw condition unfiltered by prudence, Burke argued, people will be exploited in the name of these abstractions rather than treated with the dignity that complicated beings who coexist in organic communities deserve. Just as great care must be taken when attempting to transfer vegetation, animals, and organs from one environment to another, he wrote, utmost caution is required when seeking to transform political systems. I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral regulated liberty as well as any gentleman. . . . But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.10

Unlike cultural relativists, Burke was willing to assert the validity of universal ideals. Unlike ideologues, he disagreed with attempts to apply them indiscriminately everywhere at any time. He opposed the Revolution in France because he felt the French were imposing a doctrine of liberty, equality, and fraternity upon a society historically unprepared to realize such a doctrine. He thus charged the French with practicing politics as if they were computing an algebraic equation and predicted in 1790 that the abstract quality of their venture would usher in a wave of autocratic repression unmatched by the feudal monarchs. Burke favored the American Revolution, however, because in his opinion Americans basically were transplanted Englishmen and -women who were trying merely to adapt

130

George Washington

traditional English ideals of self-rule to their new home. He considered this to be a prudential goal that would serve to lay a firm foundation for the evolution of republicanism in the United States. Although classical prudence involves a reconciliation of ideals with material circumstances, it does not compromise ideals. Prudent leaders raise the ethical level of power politics. They facilitate justice by seeking to secure proximate morality in an essentially immoral world. Nor do they entertain romantic notions about what can be accomplished by politics in the name of justice. In the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas, who converted Aristotelian prudence into one of the cardinal virtues of Christianity, advised princes not to pass laws and initiate policies that surpass the virtue of their citizens. He recommended that rulers design a political agenda according to higher-law standards of justice and then adjust those standards to their citizens’ demonstrated capacity to follow them. “Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue,” he wrote. “Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices from which it is possible for the majority to abstain and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which society could not be maintained.”11 The point is that prudent political leaders consider ideals to be both indispensable and insufficient.12 They judge ideals to be indispensable because ideals provide infallible goals toward which fallible human beings can strive, with the hope of gaining some increase in justice or decrease in injustice. They judge ideals to be insufficient because ideals are unable to adjust themselves to the complex demands and challenges of everyday life. From this perspective, proponents of classical prudence emerge as authentic realists in their quest to balance the immaterial and material aspects of the universe, the good and bad impulses of human beings, and the theory and practice of politics. PRUDENT PRESIDENTIAL BEHAVIOR Most scholars rate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as our greatest Presidents because of the roles they played in leading the United States through the defining moments in American history—the Founding, the Civil War, and the Great Depression.13 Yet scholars generally have not recognized that Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt’s successes were due in large measure to their adherence to Aristotelian prudence. Classical prudence involves balancing ideals and material circumstances, a juggling act at which Washington was thoroughly proficient. For centuries prior to his inauguration in 1789, political philosophers considered popular government to be inherently unstable. It was widely held that cit-

Washington’s Leadership

131

izens of republics first would pursue freedom to excess, soon grow tired of fulfilling the duties of self-rule, and later solicit tyrants to contend with the resulting chaos by imposing their own brand of oppressive discipline. The political climate that prevailed during the early days of American independence seemed to confirm this pessimistic assessment. A century and a half of life marked by self-sufficiency on the frontier had persuaded many Americans that individuals could govern themselves without much interference from formal political institutions. The inept rule of George III and the English Parliament made them particularly suspicious of centralized authority. The Articles of Confederation decentralized and fragmented government to the point of impotence. In the confusion that followed, demagogues such as Daniel Shays began to attract mass support. At the time Washington was probably the only representative of the established order to whom Americans would delegate any significant amount of political power. The courage, honesty, diligence, and acumen with which he had fought the Revolution dispelled fear on the part of his countrymen that he would abuse their trust. When Washington became chief executive, their trust in him was transferred to the government. When Washington achieved success in office popular endorsement for republicanism was guaranteed. Americans started to appreciate the handiwork of Washington and the other Founding Fathers who had designed a political system in 1788 that proved to be both weak enough to allow for popular sovereignty and strong enough to combat anarchy. On the one hand, Washington believed in the ideals of individualism and equality. He rejected out of hand a request issued by Continental Army officers that he become king. On the other, Washington knew enough about the human condition to realize that even free people require authoritative government. “We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation,” he wrote. “Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.”14 Even Thomas Jefferson, who was more inclined to support a decentralized national government, had to admit that Washington’s vindication of political power in those early years delivered American republicanism from “a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”15 Abraham Lincoln’s mixture of adherence to ideals and appreciation of material circumstances helped to preserve both the existence and the integrity of the Union during the Civil War. On the subject of slavery, which he considered to be the primary source of conflict between the North and South, Lincoln was adamant. “I am naturally anti-slavery,” he wrote in 1864. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”16 Before 1861, however, Lincoln was opposed to using the power of the national government to abolish slavery in the Southern states. By the middle of the nineteenth century the institution

132

George Washington

already had existed there for 200 years. It would be imprudent to attempt to overturn an established culture overnight, he reasoned, since the resulting chaos would only make matters worse for everyone, including the slaves themselves. Lincoln foresaw that economic changes would render slavery anachronistic in the near future and recommended that the national government let it die a natural death in the South over time. Lincoln nevertheless reached an entirely different conclusion about the spread of slavery to the territories. It would be unconscionable, he argued, to justify the South’s “peculiar institution” under conditions where it had not yet taken root. Lincoln thus was unable to support Stephen Douglas’ scheme to allow local plebiscites to decide the fate of slavery in the territories. In such areas, where the principle of equality enjoyed greater acceptance than in the South, he maintained, majority rule possessed neither the legal nor moral authority to deny people their humanity. As he said in the Lincoln–Douglas debates: The Republican Party . . . looks upon [slavery] as being a moral, social, and political wrong; and while they contemplate it as such, they nevertheless have due regard for its actual existence among us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way . . . Yet having due regard for these, they desire a policy in regard to it that looks to its not creating any more danger. They insist that it should as far as may be, be treated as a wrong, and one of the methods of treating it as wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no larger.17

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to reconcile the ideals of equality and individualism with the material circumstances of the twentieth century. The domestic situation he inherited was marked by the worst economic crisis in our history. In 1932 twelve million Americans, nearly one out of every four workers, were jobless. Almost two hundred banks were closing monthly, depriving depositors of their cash, savings, and futures.18 Violence erupted on the farms where rapidly decreasing crop prices and rapidly increasing rates of foreclosure sowed the seeds of rebellion.19 Confidence in the nation clearly was at low ebb. In confirmation of Washington’s earlier fears, cries arose throughout the land for a dictator to put an end to the chaos. Roosevelt considered laissez-faire public policy to be the chief cause of these hardships. As he was fond of saying, the old American axiom that “government which governs least governs best” had come to mean “that government is best which is most indifferent” to human suffering.20 Prior to the twentieth century, when political problems rarely crossed state and national boundaries, American democracy was synonymous with private initiative, individual philanthropy, and local institutions. With the exceptions of the Founding and the Civil War, there were few issues that Americans thought individuals could not cope with successfully on their own.

Washington’s Leadership

133

Roosevelt understood that a systematically powerful national government would have been unthinkable in the United States under these circumstances. But times had changed: technological innovations in transportation and communication had created a world in which people and nations were interrelated to a degree previously unknown. National and international crises occurred more frequently and with greater complexity than ever before. This new world order, Roosevelt maintained, required that individualism be supplemented by an energetic central government to defend the basic freedoms of all Americans from mammoth, multinational pressure groups being organized to promote the selfish interests of a privileged few. The relationship between individual freedom and a systematically powerful national government, which Americans once would have considered an anathema, had now become a prudential necessity. Despite their emphasis on universal ideals, proponents of classical prudence do not romanticize them. They have no illusions about how well ethics can control human appetites and realize that power politics is part of the prudential view of reality as well. It comes down to a question of priorities. If political leaders deal only with ethical values, they are idealists. If political leaders ignore values, they are cynics. If, in their deliberations, values are ever secondary to tangible results, they are pragmatists. And if they do their best to honor ideals in the face of practical obstacles, they are prudent leaders, in the classic sense. Three illustrations of prudence in action are Washington’s foreign policy, Lincoln’s conduct of the Civil War, and Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration. In the hostilities between England and France that ensued after Louis XVI was guillotined, it would have been morally correct for the United States to align with France, whose support had been so crucial to our own struggle with England and with whom we more closely shared republican values. The United States and France actually had signed treaties of mutual defense in 1788. Yet Washington realized that the English constituted a more valuable trading partner and that their army and navy were more formidable adversaries. His prudent decision was to follow a course of action that would neither explicitly harm France nor provoke England. After the rebel attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln made winning the Civil War his number one priority. Although his repugnance for slavery and desire to see it eradicated remained as intense as ever, he argued that new circumstances warrant new policies. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery,” he told Horace Greeley in 1862. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”21 At the beginning of the hostilities, in the midst of repeated Union defeats,

134

George Washington

Lincoln was concerned about losing the loyalty of those border states where slavery still existed. He thus countermanded an 1861 order by Gen. John C. Fremont to free slaves in Missouri. In 1863, however, when prospects for Union victory seemed within reach, Lincoln devised a new strategy. On January 1 of that year he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which had the practical effect of freeing only Confederate slaves. This prudent maneuver permitted him to proclaim the nation’s idealistic aversion to slavery while keeping border states on his side and promoting slave uprisings in the South.22 In directing the war Lincoln sometimes played the role of a presidential dictator. He raised an army without congressional consent, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, permitted government tampering with private mail, and declared martial law behind the lines. While admitting the unconstitutionality and undemocratic nature of these actions, Lincoln claimed that they were made necessary by an extraordinary assault on the Constitution and American democracy itself. “I did understand,” he maintained in 1864: that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government—that nation—of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it.23

Although the Great Depression disrupted the lives of so many Americans in every walk of life, for prudent reasons Roosevelt focused his attention on agriculture. He worried that if farmers, usually the most conservative Americans, were to revolt, the rest of the nation soon would follow. Roosevelt responded in 1933 by establishing the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which paid farmers to rotate their planting schedules, bought nonperishable crops, and provided mortgage relief. Many farmers objected to this program initially because they were unable to imagine that greater profits could result from less work and production. Yet by 1936 Roosevelt’s gamble began to pay off. Agricultural income had increased by 50 percent, at least for the largest farmers, and the incipient farm rebellion was averted.24 A short while later Roosevelt did extend aid to other Americans through such programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Social Security Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. But the fact remains that he began with the farmers. An idealist would have attempted to help all Americans

Washington’s Leadership

135

simultaneously. A cynic would have fomented rebellion to consolidate his own power. And a pragmatist would have provided the most aid to the groups that could pay him back with the most votes. IMPRUDENT PRESIDENTIAL BEHAVIOR Of course, as fallible human beings, Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were not always able to maintain the delicate balance between ideals and material circumstances that characterizes classical Western prudence. In 1794 Washington organized a military expedition of 13,000 soldiers to collect excise taxes on whiskey from a relatively small number of rebellious farmers in western Pennsylvania. The tax itself was an unrealistic one since frontier farmers at the turn of the nineteenth century did not possess the means to take all of their grain to market. The rest typically would be distilled into whiskey that functioned as a form of barter to supplement farm income in lieu of unsold crops. Washington’s suppression of the so-called “Whiskey Rebellion” was a prime example of political overkill. He wanted to make the point that Americans could not break the law with impunity but went too far and acted like a tyrant for whom the end always justifies the means. Afterward, he seems to have realized his error. In 1795 Washington used the presidential pardon for the first time in history to grant amnesty to the convicted farmers. In 1862 Lincoln lent his support to a plan to deport slaves liberated by the war to Central America. When free black leaders described this proposal as a cynical attempt by white Americans to shirk their responsibility to those they had brought over to the United States in chains, Lincoln responded: “But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other.”25 Given the fact that Roosevelt served for more than three terms, it is not surprising that he experienced many more failures in office than Washington or Lincoln. The Japanese Exclusion Act that Roosevelt signed in 1942 may have been “the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights of American citizens in our history.”26 Based on unconfirmed charges of sabotage, 112,000 Japanese Americans were forcefully removed by the army from their homes and businesses on the West Coast to ten inland relocation centers where they remained for the duration of the war. Roosevelt was pressured by military authorities, the media, congressmen, senators, and members of his own cabinet to issue the order. And the Supreme Court later validated it in three separate opinions. Nevertheless, he must take personal responsibility for condoning racist behavior that directly contradicted his stated democratic ideals. Roosevelt’s attitude toward European Jews and African Americans was

136

George Washington

pragmatic at best. During the 1930s, when the Nazis were allowing Jews to leave Germany, he opened the doors to only a small percentage of those desperately wanting to become American citizens. After 1940, when the Nazis were implementing their “Final Solution” by rounding up European Jews into death camps, he denied requests by American Jewish leaders to bomb both the rail lines leading to the gas chambers and the death camps themselves. Although he outlawed racial discrimination in the federal government and defense industries, he refused to support Senator Robert Wagner’s antilynching bill and was unwilling to desegregate the armed services. He rationalized his decision not to do more for European Jews and African Americans by claiming that a more active approach would jeopardize other New Deal legislation and interfere with the war effort. Despite these and other serious miscalculations, more often than not, Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were able to practice politics according to the Aristotelian model. Their obvious successes as leaders have led advocates of various theories of leadership to claim them as their own exemplars, but the most fitting description of their style and the reason for their truly monumental achievements is their embrace, knowingly or not, of the principle of prudence. Prudent leaders take seriously both our potential for justice and propensity for evil. They emphasize the reality of transcendent ideals in order to provide us with direction and guidance so that we can avoid evil as much as possible. Those who do not view the universe and human nature in such a paradoxical fashion will find classical prudence to be incomprehensible and will tend to confuse it up with idealism, cynicism, or pragmatism. The scholarship of the influential historians Edmund Morgan, Richard Hofstadter, and James MacGregor Burns illustrates this confusion. Morgan described Washington as a master of power politics. His genius, Morgan writes, “lay in his understanding of power . . . an understanding unmatched by that of his contemporaries.”27 But Morgan’s portrayal misses the essential moral character of Washington’s leadership. As a rule, masters of power politics are cynics who differ fundamentally from proponents of classical prudence. The former unabashedly exploit and manipulate politics for their own purposes. The politics of the latter is necessarily limited by the just ends they are attempting to reach. As Aristotle explained, “It is not possible to be [prudent] in the true sense of the word without . . . virtue.”28 Chief Justice John Marshall offered a more realistic assessment of Washington’s leadership style: Endowed by nature with a sound judgment, and an accurate and discriminating mind, he feared not that laborious attention which made him perfectly master of those subjects, in all their relations, on which he was to decide; and this essential quality was guided by an unvarying sense of moral right, which would tolerate the

Washington’s Leadership

137

employment only of those means that would bear the most rigid examination; by a fairness of intention which neither sought nor required disguise; and by a purity of virtue which not only was untainted, but unsuspected.29

Hofstadter represented Lincoln as a fiercely ambitious person and a selfpromoter who desired power and participated in creating the mythology that ranks him among the most admired leaders in world history. According to Hofstadter, he was a “deliberate and responsible” opportunist, a courtier of “influential and financial friends,” a “political propagandist,” a “professional politician looking for votes,” and a “follower . . . not a leader of public opinion.”30 The Emancipation Proclamation, Hofstadter argued, had “all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading.”31 Hofstadter assumes incorrectly that ambition and desire for power are always negative attributes. No one has ever become President without being ambitious and wanting power. The key question is what Presidents do after they fulfill their ambition and take office. Lincoln preserved the Union and its democratic ideals and worked to secure the eventual passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.32 As Harry Jaffa pointed out, in order to accomplish these lofty goals Lincoln had to become a master of the prudential principle that justice “pointed simultaneously in two directions: one, towards the philosopher’s understanding of the universal, transpolitical dimension of human experience; the other, towards the political man’s understanding of the particular experiences of particular peoples in particular regimes.”33 In Jaffa’s words, Lincoln “[knew] what is good or right, [knew] how much of that good is attainable, and [acted] to secure that much good [without abandoning] the attainable good by grasping for more.”34 James MacGregor Burns develops the theme that Roosevelt suffered from a “derangement of ends and means.”35 Burns criticizes Roosevelt for possessing what he identifies as a Machiavellian split personality: one personality dedicated to transcendent moral goals, the other to the acquisition of political power. By likening Roosevelt to Machiavelli, however, Burns engages in a serious contradiction. Consider the quotation from The Prince with which he introduces his book Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox. A prince must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this. Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.36

138

George Washington

Although the word “prudent” appears in the quotation, Machiavelli is using it in a way that has nothing at all to do with Aristotle. In The Prince Machiavelli dismisses universal ideas with the statement “there’s such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation.”37 Based on this materialistic view of reality, Machiavelli counseled leaders to follow whatever strategy, moral or immoral, is necessary to maintain power and further their own interests. Since Machiavelli advises leaders to be amoral and Burns considers Roosevelt to be at heart “a moral man,”38 his analogy is invalid. To use Machiavelli’s own metaphor, lions and foxes struggle to survive and fulfill their other instinctual needs, but neither possesses a soul or pursues moral goals. By describing Roosevelt’s presidential leadership style as a form of Machiavellianism, Burns demonstrates a common misconception about the meaning of prudence. There is a tendency to refer to the term the same way that Machiavelli referred to it—as a combination of might and cunning. Yet Aristotle explained that while might and cunning can exist independently of moral principles, genuine prudence cannot.39 When might and cunning are removed from their moral context, they lose their connection to classical prudence, turn into tools of cynicism, and become “mere clever roguery.”40 Roosevelt’s “main trouble was intellectual,” Burns concludes.41 Roosevelt’s untheoretical turn of mind, he argues, clouded his judgment about the proper relationship between democratic ends and means and led him unwittingly down the road to Machiavellianism. His “mind was an eminently operative one,” Burns writes. “He disdained elaborate, fine-spun theories . . . He hated abstractions. His mind yearned for the detail, the particular, the specific . . . He had a passion for the concrete.”42 Burns here misses the distinction made originally by Aristotle between theoretical and practical reason. He attributes Roosevelt’s “derangement of ends and means” to what Oliver Wendell Holmes called his “second class intellect.”43 Aristotle, however, taught that there are two different types of intelligence, only one of which is relevant to government. Indeed, Roosevelt’s distrust of abstractions, which Burns and Holmes disparage, was considered by Aristotle to be essential to dealing, not with figures and equations, but with flesh-and-blood human beings in organic political communities. Doris Kearns Goodwin accurately identifies Roosevelt’s talent for prudent leadership when she observes that he was committed to using his extraordinary political skills to serve “humane and democratic values” and “to better the life of the average American.”44 CONCLUSION Prudence is a strategy designed to help leaders deal with apparently insuperable political dilemmas. Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt con-

Washington’s Leadership

139

fronted the nation’s Founding, the Civil War, and the Great Depression as people of principle who also appreciated the significance of circumstance and were able to harmonize the two. Their common goal of aiming for the noble high ground while grudgingly receiving less was meant to keep at least some semblance of decency and justice alive in a world often subsumed by greed. It never occurred to them that they possessed superhuman powers. Roosevelt might have been speaking for all of them when he confessed: “I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average not only for myself but for the team.”45 They turned out to be exceptional hitters. Although they believed deeply in republicanism, they rejected doctrinaire ideological positions. Although they took change seriously, they refused to submit to relativism. While they traded in ideals and gave due regard to material circumstances, they were neither idealists, cynics, nor pragmatists. Their own method was to “guide political men, who need to know what is right here and now, but to guide them in the light of what is just everywhere and always.”46 They had “what John Keats called the ‘quality [that] went to form a Man of Achievement,’ that quality ‘which Shakespeare possessed so enormously . . . Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ ”47 In the final analysis, it is this talent to think and act beyond the constraints imposed by reductionist political categories that defines classical Western prudence and describes George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential leadership styles. NOTES 1. R. G. Mulgan, Aristotle’s Political Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 9. 2. A number of renowned students of presidential leadership never discuss Aristotelian prudence. 3. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Thomas Mahoney (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), pp. 288–289. All italics in this chapter are the authors’ own. 4. Aristotle, The Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 176. 5. Aristotle, The Politics, ed. and trans. Ernest Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 6. 6. Aristotle, The Ethics, p. 305. 7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 100. 8. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 71. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., p. 8. 11. Dino Bigongiari, ed., The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Hafner Press, 1953), p. 68.

140

George Washington

12. Francis Canavan, The Political Reason of Edmund Burke (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960), p. 25. 13. Most polls ranking the presidents agree with my list, although perhaps for different reasons. See, for example, William Pederson and Ann McLaurin, eds., The Rating Game in American Politics: An Interdisciplinary Approach (New York: Irvington, 1987). 14. Washington quoted in Edmund Morgan, The Genius of George Washington (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1980), p. 80. 15. Jefferson quoted in James T. Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974), p. 175. 16. Richard Current, ed., The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 297. 17. Ibid., p. 110. 18. John Blum, Edmund Morgan, et al., The National Experience (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 618. 19. Ibid., p. 636. 20. Roosevelt quoted in Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1990), p. 207. 21. Current, The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln, p. 215. 22. Ethan Fishman, “Under the Circumstances: Abraham Lincoln and Classical Prudence,” in ed. Frank Williams, William Pederson, and Vincent Marsala, Abraham Lincoln: Sources and Styles of Leadership (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 9. 23. Current, The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln, p. 298. 24. Blum et al., The National Experience, p. 637. 25. Current, The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln, p. 209. 26. Doris K. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 321. 27. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington, p. 6. 28. Aristotle, The Ethics, p. 191. 29. Marshall quoted in Douglas S. Freeman, Washington (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), p. xii. 30. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), pp. 100, 116, 133. 31. Ibid., p. 132. 32. Fishman, “Under the Circumstances,” p. 11. 33. Harry Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 1. 34. Ibid., p. 371. 35. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 609. 36. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956), p. i. 37. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992), p. 42. 38. Burns, The Lion and the Fox, p. 475. 39. Aristotle, The Ethics, p. 189. 40. W. D. Ross, Aristotle (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), p. 214.

Washington’s Leadership

141

41. Burns, The Lion and the Fox, p. 334. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., p. 147. 44. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, p. 630. 45. Roosevelt quoted in Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny, p. 120. 46. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided, p. 1. 47. David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), p. 143.

8 America’s Presidential Triumvirate: Quantitative Measures of Character William D. Pederson and Frank J. Williams

Though the rating game of Presidents is open to question on several accounts as to what it signifies, one of the strongest patterns it suggests is that nearly all historians and political scientists consider George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt as America’s “greatest” Presidents.1 Lincoln is almost always ranked the premier president with Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington vying for the second spot. These three Presidents set the standard against which all other presidents are measured. On the other hand, it remains somewhat unclear precisely what kind of character or personality these three presidents possessed. In fact, recent scholars are critical of George Washington for having a “passive-negative” character but praise him for his willingness to voluntarily give up power.2 Similarly, Abraham Lincoln is portrayed by his most recent biographer as a passive president who was shaped by events more than he was able to shape them himself, and Franklin Roosevelt is sometimes portrayed as a conservative rather than a liberal, having saved capitalism through reform rather than undermining it.3 This chapter shows why these three presidents are similar in terms of temperament. For purpose of analysis the chapter is divided into three parts: (1) an extension of James David Barber’s classifications of twentiethcentury presidents to include nearly every pre-twentieth-century president, particularly the great triumvirate, (2) an application of the five empirical

144

George Washington

checks on these presidents to demonstrate that they show common patterns, and (3) some tentative conclusions about the deeper psychological meaning of the mental disposition of these presidents. A “BARBERIAN” EXTENSION James David Barber asserts that our mentally healthiest presidents are not only the most active in office, but also enjoy their work the most. Unfortunately, his theory relies almost exclusively on twentieth-century presidents. He presents a strong case for showing that Franklin D. Roosevelt was an “active-positive,” and only in passing suggests that George Washington would fit the “passive-negative” category, and avoids classifying the American president who virtually defies classification, Abraham Lincoln.4 If we construct a framework to extend Barber’s classifications to pre-twentieth-century presidents, it may be possible to create an empirical check on his classification efforts. Fortunately, the findings from the polls of historians and political scientists who have rated presidents—together with the work of psychologists—provide the tools for an extension of Barber’s pool of presidents, as well as to check on his classifications. Earlier research has modified the results of the Maranell-Dodder poll for this purpose.5 Among other inquiries, that poll asked nearly 600 American historians to rank the relative activity of presidents. The poll also asked historians to rank the flexibility of presidents, which the work of psychologist Lawrence S. Kubie suggested is similar to the other dimension found in Barber’s approach, namely personal “affect,” or how one feels about the energy a person invests in a job. Rather than trying to quantify “enjoyment,” it is much easier to quantify a president’s flexibility or inflexibility in office. In other words, this approach suggests that flexibility may be used as a substitute measure for affect, which, in addition to activeness, allows healthy human beings to enjoy their work. In fact, Kubie defined psychological health as: flexibility, the freedom to learn through experience, the freedom to change with changing internal and external circumstances, to be influenced by reasonable arguments, admonitions, exhortation, and the appeal to emotions; the freedom to respond appropriately to the stimulus of reward and punishment, and especially, the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of normality is flexibility, in all these vital ways. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.6

This definition of mental health makes possible a comparative framework. Pederson’s modification and extension of Barber’s approach covers thirty-two presidents (George Washington through Lyndon Johnson) rather than the dozen cases Barber initially used in his study, The Presidential Char-

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

145

acter. Approximately 80 percent of Barber’s classifications correlate with the similar classification in Pederson’s extension.7 All the twentieth-century active-positive (flexible) presidents are classified similarly in both schemes. Only George Washington and James Madison are classified differently among the pre-twentieth-century presidents. Yet Barber has never done an extensive analysis of either of these presidents or of any other pre-twentieth-century president except Andrew Johnson. Moreover, the numerical ratings from the Pederson extension suggest that both Washington and Madison occupy borderline positions between activity and passivity. In any case, Pederson’s modification extends Barber’s six in-depth cases of active-positive presidents (Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush) to eleven: the Barber six plus George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. The question, then, is whether these presidents are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the others. Apart from Barber’s own work, recent research suggests that these presidents indeed are different in terms of their (1) energy, (2) flexibility, (3) self-actualization, (4) decency, and (5) openness. Before the record of the presidential triumvirate is examined on these criteria, the general patterns of the active-positives require some discussion.

THE CHARACTER OF ACTIVE-POSITIVE Energy Barber’s theory of presidential behavior argues that the active-positives, as well as “lawmaker” legislators, exemplify a high level of activity in office.8 Data from Table 1 suggest that about one-fourth of American presidents fall into the mentally most healthy category. Few scholars would question the enormous energy of the Roosevelts. Yet as suggested earlier, Abraham Lincoln’s most recent biographer considers him passive, and Barber questions the activeness of George Washington. It will be important to clarify the presidential triumvirate in relation to one another to determine whether the subjective appraisals have placed these presidents out of context. Data from Table 2 suggest that the active-positives serve twice as long as most presidents. While most presidents live shorter lives than their white male counterparts in the general population, the active-positives live the longest of the four types of Barber’s presidents and live even longer than their white male counterparts. Data from Table 3 may indicate why the active-positives live longer, even in a “killer job.”9 Although they are the hardest working of the four pres-

Table 1 Presidential Classifications

Note: The numbers to the left of each name indicate degree of activeness: a high positive score is active and a high negative score is passive. The number to the right of each name indicates the degree of flexibility; a high positive score is flexible and a high negative score is inflexible.

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

147

Table 2 Presidents’ Years in Office and Age of Death*

Note: *Assassinated presidents are omitted

idential types, they are able to relax and reduce their stress, in part through regular exercise or vacations.10 From such an analysis, the activity in office and exercise records of the presidential triumvirate need to be checked and compared to those of others. Flexibility and Enjoyment Barber also suggests that the active-positives enjoy political office. Table 2 suggests that they are the most flexible and active group of presidents who averaged longer terms. It may be that this presidential group personifies most clearly the classic ideal of a sound mind and body. In any event, the dimensions of flexibility and enjoyment in office of the presidential triumvirate deserve special attention. The traditional images of the stoic Washington and the sad Lincoln need comparison to the ebullient Roosevelt. Self-Actualization Barber’s theory suggests that both the active-positive president and the “lawmaker” legislator are individuals who self-actualize, or fulfill them-

Table 3 Presidential Life Expectancy

Note: Life expectancy based on white males born in the same years as presidents. Slightly different figures in extreme right column for expected years of life are adapted from data in Bill McAllister, ‘‘The Precarious Role of the President’s Physician,’’ Washington Post Health (9 February 1988), p. 13. Source: Adapted from data of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in U.S. News & World Report (24 November 1980), p. 26.

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

149

Table 4 Lawyer and Nonlawyer Presidents

Notes: A lawyer is defined as a person who has fulfilled state requirement and is licensed to practice the law. *The classifications of Nixon through Reagan are based on Barber’s personal assessments since Maranell’s study was conducted during March 1968. Two presidents were excluded from that study: W. Harrison (non lawyer) and Garfield (lawyer) because each served terms of less than a year. Source: Thomas M. Green and William D. Pederson, ‘‘The Behavior of Lawyer-Presidents,’’ in ed. William D. Pederson, The ‘‘Barberian’’ Presidency (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 158–159.

selves, through the political arena. In other words, they would seemingly be more satisfied in a political leadership role than other presidential personalities. Earlier research has found that the active-positives (flexibles) are the least likely to be lawyers (see Tables 4 and 5). The presidential triumvirate offers an interesting comparison on this dimension in that George Washington was not a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln was a considerably successful lawyer, and Franklin Roosevelt was a nonpracticing lawyer.

150

George Washington

Table 5 Legal Commitment Index of Lawyer-Presidents

Note: *Period from the time of fulfillment of state requirement to practice the law until first running for a state or national political office that did not require bar admission. Lincoln and Monroe ran for public office before being licensed to practice law. Source: Thomas M. Green and William D. Pederson, ‘‘The Behavior of Lawyer-Presidents,’’ in ed. William D. Pederson, The Barberian Presidency (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 158–159.

Decency Research has suggested that active-positives (flexibles) display the most generous spirit among the four types of presidents. Rather than holding grudges and making enemies, they are most likely to grant clemency.11 Moreover, while amnesties and pardons are typically unpopular acts with the public, the active-positives are the most willing of the four groups of presidents to act when justice is at stake in these matters (see Tables 6 and 7). More recent research has confirmed the pattern of amnesties by wartime presidents to the overall pardon record of peacetime presidents.12 The clemency record of presidents may be the most suggestive quantitative measure of the overall decency dimensions of presidents, thus helping to explain the ranking of the presidential triumvirate.

Openness and Equality Some research suggests that the active-positives are the least likely to want Secret Service protection, presumably because they are the most psy-

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

151

Table 6 Comparison of Presidential Type with Amnesty Record*

Note: *Here amnesty refers to formal proclamation or executive order given to a group of individuals. They are found in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897) and Morris Sherman, Amnesty in America: An Annotated Bibliography (Passaic: New Jersey Library Association, 1974).

chologically secure of the four types of presidents.13 Previous research suggests further that they are likely to have decentralized, subordinate-center (rather than a centralized, boss-centered) White House staffing arrangement in which professionals are treated as equals by the president.14 Because the presidential triumvirate covers the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, the comparison invites an analysis of how these presidents dealt with their professional equals, as well as human rights in general. It is likely that the openness of these presidents would lead them to seek more opportunities to engage in dialogue with others and promote the overall dignity of others in their eras.

152

George Washington

Table 7 Comparison of Presidential Type with Pardon Record

Notes: *Percent of pardons granted to federal criminals measured against pardons acted upon. Data adapted from Charles S. Clark, ‘‘Reagan’s Parsimonious Use of Pardon Power,’’ CQ Weekly Report (3 November 1984), pp. 2878–2880. Reagan’s percentage as of August 1985. See Irvin Molotsky, ‘‘All the President’s Commutations,’’ New York Times (16 August 1985).

In sum, then, the record of the presidential triumvirate needs to be assessed using these quantitative measures of presidential personality. If these presidents are active-positives, they should be energetic, flexible, open leaders capable of generosity to opponents and overall concern for promoting the dignity and equality of people. THE TRIUMVIRATES’ COMPARATIVE RECORD Physical Energy George Washington As America’s first self-made president, Washington spent more of his time at the center of national affairs for a longer period than any other president: seventeen years. In many facets of America’s most creative political office, he set the standard of expectation. He limited himself to two terms for example, a precedent that survived until FDR. Though he lived in a different age and boasted a stoic temperament, Washington’s life combined energy and ambition even if his enjoyment in the presidency was restrained. Insights into his longevity are suggested by his exercise record. As Thomas Jefferson noted, he was “the best horseman of his age.” During the American Revolution, he could ride horseback for days as well as walk for a week without fatigue. Moreover, in addition to almost daily rides, he danced from his teenage years until his late fifties. An avid fox hunter, he went on consecutive hunts, which could last up to seven hours.15

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

153

His letters and his diaries, over forty volumes in printed form, record his ambition. He hated inactivity. After two legislative defeats, in 1758 at the age of twenty-six, he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.16 His energy and his ambition propelled him into a military career and a political one at the same time that he married the colonies’ wealthiest widow. Abraham Lincoln Lincoln’s ambition is best described in the well-known line of his law partner, William Herndon, as a “little engine that knew no rest.” He epitomizes the self-made man of the nineteenth century, becoming one of Illinois’s best-known lawyers of his day at the same time he emerged as a political leader of the Whigs in the state legislature. His appreciation of the presidency is suggested in his eagerness to seek reelection, despite the strain of the Civil War. He was the first president since Andrew Jackson, nearly forty years earlier, to win reelection. Lincoln surely benefitted from the vigorous exercise he took as a young laborer on the prairie. Chopping wood, splitting rails, and propelling flatboats really do build endurance! Despite his chronic tendency to moodiness and depression, Lincoln remained in fine physical shape and enjoyed excellent health in the presidency, especially when contrasted to the fate of Jefferson Davis, who was chronically ill while serving as his presidential counterpart in the Confederacy.17 Franklin Roosevelt Modeling much of his behavior after his distant cousin Theodore, Franklin is a classic example of an active president capable of enormous physical exertion, despite a serious physical disability. In his youth, he was an avid outdoorsman, a frequent golfer, and an outstanding sailor. After polio struck, he adapted to a new routine of regular swimming. He had a pool built at the White House in 1933 and was an avid swimmer. Despite his paralysis, he could, in fact, project an image of an energetic individual.18 Flexibility and Enjoyment George Washington Even though considerably less than Roosevelt and Lincoln, the Pederson extension of Barber’s classifications suggests that Washington was a flexible president. He showed a capacity for growth and was capable of learning.19 He intuitively understood the failures of the Articles of Confederation and the need for a new Constitution. Abraham Lincoln The Pederson extension of Barber’s classifications suggests that Lincoln was one of the most flexible presidents. He had the ability to adapt his

154

George Washington

political ideology from the Whigs to the Republicans without himself becoming an ideologue in politics or religion. His greatly misunderstood policy was “to have no policy.”20 Though he may have suffered recurrent depression during the Civil War, Lincoln briefly demonstrated his underlying cheerfulness after Robert E. Lee’s surrender.21 Franklin Roosevelt Of course, in contrast to the stoic Washington and the sad Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt is the epitome of the twentieth-century president who enjoyed the presidency despite the dual threats of the Great Depression and World War II. He was the epitome of adaptability.22

Self-Actualization George Washington Like all the active-positives except Lincoln, Washington was not a lawyer. Though he was primarily a military man who had been denied a regular commission in the British army, Washington in many ways was a politician too. He had maintained an interest in politics since he was a teenager.23 He ran for election twice before winning his 1758 contest for the House of Burgesses.24 His military success thrust him into the presidency, the living archetype for an eighty-sixth Federalist Paper.25 Abraham Lincoln Though active-positives are the least likely to become lawyers, Abraham Lincoln is the exception. His multiple careers support Erik Erikson’s developmental notions. Lincoln spent approximately five years in his early twenties finding himself, deciding on what course to pursue in life. Entertaining only transient thoughts as a village blacksmith and various short stints as a boatman, millworker, and rail-splitter, ultimately he gravitated toward a professional career in which he could utilize his mind while serving others. Often restless energy allowed him to perform two or three jobs at the same time. In short order he was a store clerk, political campaigner, political candidate, an elected militia captain, election clerk, surveyor, postmaster, legislator, law student, and lawyer (see Table 8). He eventually resolved his postponed identity crisis through a dual career as a politician and lawyer, but it is clear from his work experience that politics remained his first love.26 He was twenty-one years old when he delivered his first political speech during the summer of 1830; two years later he ran for the Illinois state legislature for the first time. Though Lincoln was defeated in his first attempt at elective political office, two years later he ran again and become a state legislator at twenty-five years of age.

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

155

Table 8 Lincoln’s Callings

His three successive reelection campaigns, election to the U.S. House of Representatives, and several subsequent efforts to return to legislative life provide strong indicators that he enjoyed being a “lawmaker,” enthusiastically working on public-policy issues. His commitment to politics provided only a seasonal part-time job necessitating additional employment to sustain himself. For a time he worked as a surveyor and postmaster. At the urging of his fellow military officer and legislator Major John Todd Stuart, he eventually became a lawyer. It is significant that Lincoln did not become a lawyer until three years after he was elected to political office and five years after his first unsuccessful campaign for political office. In comparison to the other lawyer presidents, the data show that Lincoln first ran for political office earlier in his career than any other president. Once Lincoln resolved his postponed identity crisis, he focused his immense ambition and energy on politics, rising rapidly from obscurity to prominence, becoming the nominal Whig leader in Illinois within only four to five years.27 He spent the remainder of his adult life either serving in political office or seeking a political position. The exception was the single five-year period after leaving Congress (1849–1854)28 after he finally resolved the conflict between his livelihood as a lawyer and his true calling, which was to work on public-policy issues as a politician. Twenty years after resolving his identity crisis, Abraham Lincoln went through a five-year period when, for the first time, he was neither in polit-

156

George Washington

ical office nor seeking it. Ostensibly retired from political office, he nonetheless used this period to observe politics from a distance while he built his legal career. He finally reentered politics, initially with the idea of returning to Illinois legislative politics, but soon switched his sights to national politics, deciding to run twice for the U.S. Senate. He was defeated, but by running publicly the second time and engaging in two celebrated debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, he established himself as one of the leading contenders for the presidency. At the age of fifty-one he turned down the post of general counsel of the nation’s largest railroad, the New York Central, in favor of the campaign for the presidency.29 Franklin Roosevelt Just as Abraham Lincoln modeled his life on George Washington by becoming a surveyor and serving, however briefly, in the state militia, Franklin Roosevelt patterned his political career on the basis of Theodore Roosevelt’s. An exception is that Franklin attended law school out of a desire to please his late father, but he quit Columbia School of Law after the first year. Nonetheless, he passed the state bar exam. He clearly indicated then that he had no desire to make a career of the law but wanted to enter politics like his distant cousin. Within three years he won a seat in the New York legislature at twenty-eight years of age.30

Decency One of the best quantitative insights into the character of the activepositives is the approach they take toward clemency. Though the granting of amnesty and pardon tends to be an unpopular policy with the public since it short-circuits the normal justice process, the active-positive president is willing to go against popular opinion to promote justice. The issue of amnesty and pardon may be viewed as a measure of the overall decency of these presidents in their inclination to promote democratic values. George Washington Although not well known, George Washington’s behavior during and after the American Revolution reflects the magnanimity of the activepositives. As early as spring 1775 he considered amnesty a wise policy, and by April 1782 he recommended that Congress should pardon the loyalists who had served with the British. Although Washington did not push Congress in regard to pardoning the loyalists, during the Whiskey Rebellion he made repeated efforts through public proclamations and by empowering his negotiators to extend amnesty to the rebels. Later active-positives followed this tradition of private and public willingness to use the power of executive clemency to promote justice.31

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

157

Abraham Lincoln The best-known expression of presidential magnanimity is surely Abraham Lincoln’s call for “with malice toward none.” Active-positive presidents like Lincoln issued more than half of all of America’s formal amnesties. Though Lincoln leads the active-positives with the most amnesties, his successor, Andrew Johnson, granted the most of any president. The difference between the two separates the approaches between activepositives and active-negatives. The latter typically grant no clemency or they go to the opposite extreme, as Andrew Johnson did, while the former combine prudence with magnanimity. Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy was tempered with the same prudence and decency.32 Franklin Roosevelt Consistent with other active-positives, Franklin Roosevelt acted against the advice of his pardon attorney by granting an amnesty to World War I dissenters during the first days of his presidency.33 Openness and Equality George Washington Though by today’s standards, George Washington may not seem to be much of a democrat, for his time he was, of course, a giant pioneer in moving the American political system toward democratic norms. As the commander-in-chief, his officers identified most closely with him in contrast to ordinary soldiers.34 He attracted great minds to his cabinet and he held open receptions on Tuesday afternoons.35 In contrast to the other Founders from the South, Washington freed his slaves at his wife’s death. Even before then, as early as the 1770s, he rarely bought slaves and would never sell them. His intentions may have been revealed through his practice of bringing slaves from Mount Vernon to New York and Philadelphia and then leaving them behind after he returned to Mount Vernon.36 Abraham Lincoln Despite the potential for danger in presiding during a Civil War, Lincoln, like other active-positives, was largely indifferent to his own personal safety.37 His self-confidence was sufficiently high that he created a cabinet of his major political competitors and learned to live with the inherent tension among his cabinet secretaries.38 He was able to treat his top assistants as political equals in the sense of letting them run their own departments, and only occasionally interfering in their patronage power to name subordinates.39 Of course, his ultimate policy toward African Americans is reflected in

158

George Washington

the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. He held open house at the Executive Mansion during which he took “public opinion baths.”40 His public policy was consistent with his personal policy of marrying a woman who was a political activist for her time, sharing his legal income equally with his law partner, and treating his AfricanAmerican laundress and her family with great dignity.41 Lincoln was rather all ageist, not a sexist or a racist. He was very advanced for his time. He welcomed Frederick Douglass to the White House, enjoyed young admirers (surrogate sons, while Robert Lincoln was away at school), dealt with women including the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who encouraged him to declare a Thanksgiving holiday, and pamphleteer Anna Ellen Carroll, who wrote supportive political tracts. Franklin Roosevelt Typical of the active-positive presidents of the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt disliked Secret Service protection.42 He enjoyed losing his Secret Service detail despite the fact that Mayor Anton Cermak was shot accidentally by an assassin who intended to kill the president-elect.43 Roosevelt’s organization of the White House staff is a model of the decentralized staff, which is informal, unstructured, and subordinate centered. It encourages competition, tension, and dissent in decision making. Roosevelt acted as his own White House chief of staff, surrounding himself with generalists rather than specialists to avoid dependence upon a single source of information. Though some viewed the White House as utter chaos, the system was intended to produce the maximum amount of information for the president.44 Roosevelt treated his top assistants as political equals, as he came to regard his wife. Though they were to have separate private lives, politically they remained united. He promoted a working environment that attracted capable assistants and he was able to motivate them to excel.45 Roosevelt was able to communicate his concern for ordinary Americans through the New Deal, which ultimately called for an economic bill of rights. Regular press conferences and his Fireside Chats were used to sell the New Deal to the public. CONCLUSIONS America’s celebration of the Mount Rushmore presidents may be fully justified. The polls of experts suggest that both they and the public honor the same kind of chief executives. These are the active-positives (flexible). In short, they are activist presidents who promote democratic values by fulfilling themselves through the political arena.46 The presidential triumvirate of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt represent the president from each century

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

159

during the past three who has done the most to expand America’s experiment in self-government. George Washington filled the very office that is the most creative political office invented by the framers of the Constitution. During an Age of Absolutism, he willingly restrained his power. His active-positive character allowed this. During the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln put the Declaration of Independence into sync with the U.S. Constitution. He did this while a rebellion raged, ensuring the liberty of black slaves after 250 years of American bondage and holding a free election to consummate America’s experiment in the midst of Civil War. Lincoln’s active-positive character enabled him to accomplish this great goal. In the twentieth century Franklin Roosevelt was able to reform capitalism during an age of ideology and totalitarianism. Building on the traditions of Washington and Lincoln, he epitomizes the self-actualizer in politics who fulfills himself while resolving public-policy problems, such as the Great Depression and World War II. Activity, flexibility, magnanimity, and openness seem to be the keys to the character of the self-actualizer in democratic politics who promotes the equality and dignity of citizens and leaves a legacy of democracy. NOTES 1. William D. Pederson and Ann M. McLaurin, eds., The Rating Game in American Politics (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1987). 2. James David Barber, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972); Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984). 3. David H. Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Frank Freidel, The New Deal in Historical Perspective, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1985). 4. Barber, Presidential Character; see also William D. Pederson, ed., The “Barberian” Presidency (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1989). 5. William D. Pederson, “Amnesty and Presidential Behavior,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 7, no. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 175–183. 6. Lawrence S. Kubie, Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1958), p. 20. 7. Pederson, “Amnesty and Presidential Behavior.” 8. James David Barber, The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adaptation to Legislative Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). 9. See Edward S. Lewis and William D. Pederson, “Theodore Roosevelt as a Model of Mental and Physical Fitness,” in eds. Natalie A. Naylor, Douglas Brinkley, and John Allen Grable, Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American (Interlaken, N.Y.: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1992), pp. 245–258. 10. See William D. Pederson and Kenneth G. Kuriger, Jr., “A Comparative Test of Jimmy Carter’s Character,” in eds. Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky,

160

George Washington

The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 243–258. 11. Pederson, “Amnesty and Presidential Behavior.” 12. P. S. Ruckman, Jr., “Presidential Character and Executive Clemency: A Reexamination,” Social Science Quarterly 76, no. 1 (March 1995), pp. 213–221. 13. Dwight L. Tays, “Presidential Reaction to Security,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10, no. 4 (Fall 1980). 14. William D. Pederson and Stephen N. Williams. “The President and the White House Staff,” in ed. Edward N. Kearney, Dimensions of the Modern Presidency (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Forum Press, 1981), pp. 139–155. 15. Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father. Rediscovering George Washington (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 110–112; Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington. Man and Monument (New York: Penguin, 1982), pp. 28, 52, 106. 16. Cunliffe, George Washington, pp. 40–41, 65. 17. Donald, Lincoln, p. 352; Gabor S. Boritt, “The President at Play,” Civil War Times (Nov./Dec. 1995), pp. 14, 18, 122–123; Tim R. Miller. “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of Billiards,” Lincoln Lore, No. 1848 (Spring 1997), pp. 3–11. 18. Patrick J. Maney, The Roosevelt Presence. A Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), pp. 24–26. 19. Cunliffe, George Washington, pp. 51, 72. 20. Donald, Lincoln, p. 332. 21. Ibid., p. 595. 22. Maney, Roosevelt Presence, p. 24. 23. Brookhiser, Founding Father, p. 139. 24. Cunliffe, George Washington, p. 41. 25. Brookhiser, Founding Father, p. 71. 26. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth. Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 9. 27. Paul Simon, Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness. The Illinois Legislative Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 247. 28. Richard M. Hofstadter, American Political Tradition (New York: Knopf, 1949), pp. 122–123, 127. 29. John W. Starr, Jr., Lincoln and the Railroads (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1927), pp. 126–131. 30. Maney, Roosevelt Presence, pp. 10–11. 31. William D. Pederson, “Amnesties and Pardons,” in ed. Richard L. Blanco, The American Revolution 1775–1783: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1993), pp. 32–33. 32. Donald, Lincoln, pp. 546–574. 33. Pederson, “Amnesty and Presidential Behavior.” 34. Cunliffe, George Washington, p. 97. 35. Brookhiser, Founding Father, p. 77; Glenn A. Phelps, “George Washington: Precedent Setter,” in ed., Thomas E. Cronin, Inventing the American Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), pp. 274–275. 36. Brookhiser, Founding Father, pp. 180–183. 37. Donald, Lincoln, p. 548. 38. Ibid., p. 405. 39. Ibid., p. 412.

America’s Presidential Triumvirate

161

40. Ibid., pp. 391, 441. 41. Lloyd Ostendorf and Walter Oleksy, Lincoln’s Unknown Private Life. An Oral History by His Black Housekeeper Mariah Vance 1850–1860 (Mamaroneck, N.Y.: Hastings House, 1995). 42. Tays, “Presidential Reaction.” 43. Maney, Roosevelt Presence, pp. 45–46. 44. Pederson and Williams, “The President and the White House Staff.” 45. Maney, Roosevelt Presence, pp. 16, 55, 155. 46. James C. Davies, Human Nature in Politics (New York: John Wiley, 1963).

PART II THE ORIGINS OF WASHINGTON’S LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER

9 The Young Washington: An Interpretive Essay Mostafa Rejai and Kay Phillips

INTRODUCTION This chapter is an interpretive study of the first forty-three years of George Washington’s life: from the time of his birth on February 22, 1732, to the day he accepted the command of the Continental Army on June 16, 1775.1 The interpretive themes are outlined below and highlighted throughout the balance of the text. This chapter, needless to say, is but a beginning. Much research, analysis, thinking, and psychological application remains to be done. We hope this chapter serves as an impetus. On the whole, Washington’s road to immortality was a long and difficult one: he compensated for deprivation, drawback, and frustration by developing competence, resolve, skill, mastery, and unbounded ambition. He became obsessively concerned with his honor, dignity, and reputation. He developed a grandiose personality as a means of rising above hurts, confronting the challenges of life, and seeking autonomy and grandeur in Virginia society. He came to believe that he was a unique man, hence possessing the right to assert his will. He sought public acclaim and recognition throughout his life, while at the same time becoming abnormally sensitive, reserved, and temperamental. Washington’s inflated and grandiose self-concept—his exaggerated sense of autonomy and independence— were all rooted in a special kind of early relationship with his mother. Psychiatrists maintain2 that when the mother is cold and nongiving, she

166

George Washington

leaves the child emotionally hungry and inclined to develop a grandiose self as a means of coping with his environment. At the same time, the mother regards the child as “special”—valuable in some ways as helpful and exploitable. This paradoxical situation gives the child a sense of being unique and important. As a result, the child becomes excessively selfengrossed, with grandiose fantasies accompanied by an insatiable need for power, status, and acclaim. George Washington lost his preoccupied and indifferent father Augustine to death at age eleven. His mother, Mary Ball Washington, was a cold, ungiving, self-willed, and domineering woman, who reduced the young George to utter obedience. As a result, George gravitated more and more toward his older half-brother Lawrence, who became his mentor, his role model, his hero, and his surrogate father. George compensated for love deprivation by emulating Lawrence throughout his adolescence and much of his adult life. Eventually, he excelled Lawrence beyond all expectations. The father’s death put an end to the plan to send George to the family alma mater, the Appleby School in northern England—a deprivation that grated on George for the balance of his life. He always regretted his “defective education,” as he put it. Love deprivation at home was exacerbated by George’s unfulfilled and unrequited love for Sally Cary Fairfax, the wife of his neighbor and friend. Mary Ball Washington and Sally Fairfax left Washington emotionally paralyzed for life. He never developed an emotional attachment to another woman. By his own admission, his marriage to Martha Custis was strictly one of prudence and convenience. George Washington compensated for love deprivation and lack of schooling by seeking distinction in the military, social, economic, and political arenas. He set out to prove himself, as it were, to Mary Ball Washington, Sally Cary Fairfax, Virginia society—and to himself. Military distinction meant, initially, obtaining a district adjutantship and seeking a royal commission in the British regular army. Social and economic distinction involved ceaseless acquisition of land. Political distinction was achieved in a long membership in the Virginia House of Burgesses and in participation in the Continental Congresses. Some initial frustration notwithstanding, Washington succeeded exceedingly well in all four spheres. In particular, upon assuming the command of the Continental Army, his immortality was potentially assured. Given the drawbacks and frustration Washington experienced, we see once again that, under certain conditions, leadership and adversity are brethren. Were it not for his grandiose personality and his colossal ambition—combined with ability and opportunity—Washington would not have become the Father of His Country. We shall place the young Washington’s personality construct in broader theoretical context in the concluding section of this chapter.

The Young Washington

167

AUGUSTINE WASHINGTON George Washington was a fourth-generation American. His greatgrandfather John (who landed in Virginia in 1656), his grandfather Lawrence, and his father Augustine shared several attributes: they engaged in energetic pursuit of land, they married into a social class above their own, and they held lucrative public offices. In particular, by the 1720s Augustine had augmented the family’s landholdings to over 15,000 acres and some fifty slaves, establishing the Washingtons as minor members of the Virginia gentry. Augustine was too busy amassing wealth to devote much time or attention to family or children, George included. He provided George with books and a tutor, and he planned to send him to the Appleby School for formal education. But as the father of a large family—and one who spent his time shuttling between his farm and his mines and his iron furnace— he paid little attention to George. Never being close to his father, the young boy developed a sense of love deprivation. In all the millions of words that he ultimately put down, he seldom mentioned his father, and then only in a noncommittal manner. It was as if he had never known his father—as if the father had ceased to matter to his son—or, alternatively, as if the son, rather than accepting a painful reality, unconsciously repressed every memory of his father.3 Augustine died unexpectedly on April 12, 1743, at age forty-nine. George, then eleven, and his younger siblings were left in a state of pronounced love deprivation, especially in the light of the icy disposition and comportment of their mother (see next section). George would later compensate for love deprivation by seeking public approval and acclamation. He would become preoccupied with his honor, dignity, and reputation. He would develop a grandiose personality. He would become extraordinarily ambitious. He would assert autonomy and independence. MARY BALL WASHINGTON Mary Ball was the daughter of Joseph Ball, the son of a London attorney who came to Virginia in the 1660s. He accumulated a fortune as a planter and raised a large family. He became widowed at age fifty-eight when, much to the protestation of his children, he married an illiterate widow, Mary Johnson. Mary Ball was born a year later, in 1706. Mary Ball had a difficult childhood and experienced serious love deprivation herself. Her father died when she was three years old, and her mother followed nine years later. Mary’s guardian was George Eskridge, a lawyer of distinction, a skillful land speculator, long a member of the House of Burgesses, and a close family friend, after whom she appears to have named George Washington. With no parents to guide her and as the

168

George Washington

inheritor of a substantial estate (400 acres, fifteen cattle, three slaves), she learned to become independent and self-willed from an early age. Like most Virginia women of the time, however, she had little or no formal education. In time, Mary Ball Washington became not only a selfish, possessive, and strong-minded woman, but an unpredictable, imperious, and volatile one as well—in a word, a termagant.4 One person described her as “majestic and venerable”; another spoke of her “awe-inspiring air and manner.”5 Following Augustine’s death, Mary Ball6 became increasingly domineering. She frightened George’s childhood playmates. A nephew who frequently visited Ferry Farm used to say that he was ten times more afraid of her than of his own mother. She used George to her own ends, forcing him to care for younger siblings and to do farm chores. She spared no effort to reduce him to obedience as a means of augmenting her own personal comfort. For his part, George demonstrated an early desire to escape a harsh and unhappy home. He became distant and aloof. He spent a great deal of time with his half-brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon (see next section). During the French and Indian War (1754–1763), Mary Ball repeatedly pleaded with her eldest son not to risk the dangers of military campaigns. Finally, in 1755, Washington wrote her in no uncertain terms: “It would reflect dishonor on me to refuse; and that, I am sure, must or ought to give you greater uneasiness than my going in an honorable command.”7 As time passed, Mary Ball became resentful of Washington’s achievements and triumphs. She viewed his military, political, economic, and social activities solely as distractions that prevented him from giving her the attention that she deserved. Mary Ball died an embittered woman in 1789, at age eighty-three. Washington did not attend her funeral. The cold, austere, and ungiving Mary Ball exacerbated George’s preexisting love deprivation. She left him emotionally starved and inclined to develop a self-concept that made him rise above hurts by developing a sense of mastery and autonomy—in other words, a grandiose self—and by seeking distinction in the military, political, economic, and social arenas.

LAWRENCE WASHINGTON George Washington’s older (by fourteen years) half-brother Lawrence was the most influential person in his childhood and youth. One of the most important events in George’s early life was when he first came under Lawrence’s spell at age five, in 1737. Having just returned from his education in England, the tall and sallow Lawrence regaled George with his schoolboy adventures. George listened with fascination for he—

The Young Washington

169

and indeed the entire family—expected that in due course he too would attend the family alma mater, the Appleby School in northern England. When England declared war on Spain in 1740, partly as a means of dismantling Spanish America, Lawrence secured a captaincy in an American regiment raised as a part of the British regular army. George, then eight years old, greatly admired Lawrence’s scarlet uniform. The letters Lawrence sent home stirred in George a fascination with warfare. Lawrence returned in 1742, full of admiration for Admiral Edward Vernon, who had led the disastrous Cartagena (now Colombia) Expedition, and full of hatred for the British regular general Thomas Wentworth, who, scornful of the Colonial troops (including Lawrence), had kept them languishing on shipboard and dying of yellow fever. Although Lawrence had not experienced actual combat under Admiral Vernon, he had seen the forts of Cartagena, had heard the cannons roar, and had watched the battle. And this was enough to make him a family and a local hero. Lawrence frequently talked to George of war and the honors and glories of a soldier’s life—themes resonating with immediacy to a boy who frequently came into close contact with the trails of Native Americans. As a youngster, George confided to Lawrence that if one had to die, dying in battle would be the most honorable. Lacking parental care or a parental model, George gravitated ever more closely toward the urbane, cosmopolitan, and cultivated Lawrence. In quick order, Lawrence became George’s mentor, role model, hero, and surrogate father. Given the serious love deprivation George had experienced throughout his childhood, young manhood, and early adulthood, he undertook a series of compensatory behaviors always emulating Lawrence. In addition, having been a self-trained surveyor himself, Lawrence encouraged George’s inclination in that direction. Furthermore, he introduced George to the aristocratic and powerful Fairfax family with lasting consequences (see “Sally Cary Fairfax Section, this chapter). Having married Anne Fairfax in 1743, Lawrence’s star rose on the twin pillars of his own abilities and the Fairfax influence: he was amassing land; he sat in the House of Burgesses; and he was appointed adjutant general of the Virginia militia. In all of these capacities, Lawrence left an indelible imprint on George. Lawrence died of tuberculosis in July 1752, at age thirty-four, leaving George distraught, alone, and stricken once again with love deprivation. Determined to assert himself and to succeed, George compensated by emulating Lawrence throughout most of his young life. Bursting with energy and ambition, he pushed ever harder for wealth, status, and recognition. His grandiose personality had taken definite shape.

170

George Washington

APPLEBY NO MORE Augustine Washington’s death in 1743 brought yet another kind of deprivation for George: although his father and both his older half-brothers had been educated at the Appleby School, plans to send George there were abandoned. Among the possible reasons for George’s nonattendance at Appleby are the dispersal of Augustine’s estate among his survivors, Mary Ball Washington’s possible miserliness, and Mary Ball’s possible selfishness and possessiveness in wanting George close to home to look after younger siblings and to help with farm chores. Accordingly, George Washington’s formal education never got started. Between ages seven and eleven he studied with private tutors and attended an elementary school in Fredericksburg presided over by Rev. James Marye. He learned to read and write, and he studied geography, mathematics, geometry, and trigonometry in preparation for his role as a surveyor. In 1745 George’s schooling came to an end. Only in the mathematical basis for surveying did he go beyond an elementary education. Not having access to his inheritance, he had to find a way of making a living. Surveying was the natural course of action. The enduring elements of George Washington’s early education consisted of two self-help documents, or printed tutors. First, he carefully copied the 110 maxims of “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” The rules were drafted by sixteenth-century Jesuits for the conduct of French aristocrats and brought to Virginia from England. Some maxims dealt with hygiene and appearance: keep fingernails and teeth clean, maintain an erect posture. Others taught social graces: do not laugh or talk too loudly, control your temper. The second document occupying George’s attention was “The Young Man’s Companion,” intended for young Englishmen. The companion taught how to draft letters and legal forms; how to measure, survey, and navigate; how to build houses; how to plant and graft; how to conduct oneself in company; how to observe etiquette. When all is said and done, however, Augustine Washington’s preoccupation with land and business and commerce, Mary Ball’s imperiousness, and lack of education all left George socially awkward. He frequently referred to the aforementioned documents, but the “Rules” and the “Companion” were no substitute for a graceful social presence. Only with age— and with the influence of Lawrence and the Fairfaxes, and with military and political experience—did he attain a measure of social grace. In time Washington’s defective education came to reinforce his grandiose and ambitious personality. Since he was not adept intellectually, he resolved to prove himself in other ways: socially, politically, economically, militarily.

The Young Washington

171

SALLY CARY FAIRFAX Over the years, Lawrence Washington had come to know the Fairfaxes, a great aristocratic English family who lived in an elaborate mansion, Belvoir, adjoining Mount Vernon and overlooking the Potomac. Lawrence introduced George Washington to the Fairfax family and in particular to George William Fairfax (the eldest son) and his influential father, Colonel William Fairfax. Although George William was seven years older than George and seven years younger than Lawrence, the three developed a close friendship and went on surveying ventures together. George saw in George William many resemblances to Lawrence: both had an English education; both were urbane and sensitive; both were burgesses; both shared demeanors and mannerisms. As we have seen, in 1743 Lawrence married Anne Fairfax. George Washington became a regular at Belvoir and was systematically introduced to the ways of aristocracy. Although George continued to live with his mother in his early teens, his world became fused with those of Lawrence and the Fairfaxes. In fact, in his midteens George’s view of life seems to have changed. He learned to demand more than fate seemed to promise him: the life of a modestly prosperous and unknown planter. He yearned to be like Lawrence and George William: Lawrence, enjoying wealth and status, resplendent in his scarlet uniform; George William, rich and powerful, urbane and cosmopolitan. Young George desired to share their stylish milieu, wear elegant attire, express original ideas, enjoy refined pursuits, bask in the deference of others. Feeling awkward and clumsy, painfully aware of his lack of refinement compared to his role models, George set out tirelessly to overcome his deficiencies. He read, watched, and imitated. He took music, dancing, and fencing lessons in Fredericksburg. He developed a passion for fashionable clothing. He meticulously studied and restudied the “Rules of Civility” and “The Young Man’s Companion,” with special attention to social graces and etiquette. Like Lawrence and George William, Colonel Fairfax also exerted a powerful influence upon young George, becoming, in effect, a second surrogate father (next to Lawrence). In particular, the colonel, a forceful and enterprising man, was disappointed in George William, whom he considered reticent and passive. Young Washington possessed qualities Colonel Fairfax admired: he was strong and reserved, a superb horseman, intelligent, and ambitious. The colonel even procured an offer of a commission in the Royal Navy for George, then only fourteen, which, encouraged by Lawrence, the youngster was tempted to accept, only to be vetoed by his mother. In March 1748 George William Fairfax married the eighteen-year-old

172

George Washington

Sarah (Sally) Cary, the daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary, also of Virginia aristocracy. George Washington, barely sixteen, fell in love with Sally Fairfax, an unfulfilled emotional trauma that scarred him for the balance of his life. Flirtatious and coquettish though she appears to have been, Sally never reciprocated George’s sentiments. In the course of the French and Indian War, George Washington frequently thought of Sally, wrote to her, and implored her to reciprocate, but she refused to be drawn into a sustained correspondence. On September 12, 1758, four months after his engagement to Martha Custis and on the eve of their marriage the following January (see “Martha Custis Washington” section, this chapter), Washington wrote Sally Fairfax a lengthy letter from Fort Cumberland, Maryland, expressing his love for her. Describing himself as “a votary of love,” he added in part: “You have drawn me, dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself into an honest confession of a simple Fact—misconstrue not my meaning—it is obvious—doubt it not, nor expose it—the world has no business to know the object of my Love— declared in this manner to you when I want to conceal it.”8 Sally’s reply to George’s letter has not been located, but she evidently did write a noncommittal response, for on September 25 Washington wrote her: “Dear Madam: Do we still misunderstand the true meaning of each other’s Letters? I think it must appear so. . . . But I’ll say no more, and leave you to guess the rest.”9 In the early 1770s Sally fell ill, requiring the kind of medical attention available only in Europe. So in 1773 George William Fairfax and Sally Fairfax sailed for England, never to return. By that time revolutionary agitation was well underway and the Fairfaxes declared loyalty to the Crown. Nonetheless, Sally continued to remain a beguiling and cherished memory to George Washington. A quarter of a century later—after winning the Revolution and serving two terms as president—George Washington still could not remove Sally from his thoughts. He wrote to her on May 16, 1798, eleven years after her husband’s death and a year and a half before his own, reiterating his love for her. The letter reads in part: “So many important events have occurred and such changes in men and things have taken place. . . . None of which events, however, nor all of them together, have been able to eradicate from my mind, the recollection of those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which I have enjoyed in your company.”10 Each in her own way, Mary Ball Washington and Sally Cary Fairfax left George Washington emotionally paralyzed. Washington would never develop an emotional attachment to another woman. His marriage to Martha Custis, as we shall see, was strictly one of prudence and convenience. Instead, Washington compensated by giving expression to his grandiose self and by seeking military, political, economic, and social distinction.

The Young Washington

173

PREFERMENT As a highly ambitious young man with a grandiose self-concept—and intensely preoccupied with his reputation, honor, and dignity—George Washington’s early military activities were dominated by ceaseless attempts to gain the adjutant generalship of Virginia and to obtain a royal commission in the British regular army. After all, had Lawrence Washington not attained both offices in his youth? As the adjutant general of Virginia, Lawrence had arranged for George to join the militia early in 1752, at age twenty. On taking the oath of office, he officially became Major Washington. While Lawrence was still on his deathbed, George began to agitate for the position of the dying man, who eventually passed away on July 26, 1752. George learned from Col. William Fairfax that the Virginia adjutancy was being divided into four districts. On June 10, 1752, Washington applied to Governor Dinwiddie for appointment as one of the district adjutants. On December 13, not yet twenty-one, Washington was appointed the adjutant of the smallest and remotest southern district. With Colonel Fairfax’s assistance, he politicked and petitioned until he was appointed adjutant of his own district, Northern Neck. His emoluments: the rank of major and a salary of 100 pounds a year. His charge: to train the district militia. His experience: none! In the spring of 1753, the French decided to expand their presence in the Ohio country, intending to control the entire area. In June Dinwiddie informed London of France’s plans. In October London instructed Dinwiddie to send an emissary to warn the French to quit the Ohio country—which London considered English territory—or, failing that, to drive out the French by force. Having learned of London’s instructions through Colonel Fairfax, Washington immediately rushed to Williamsburg to persuade Dinwiddie to select him as the emissary. Twenty-one years old, the strapping young man, standing six feet two or three inches tall, broad shouldered and muscular—and supported by the Fairfaxes—Washington had little difficulty gaining Dinwiddie’s approval. Washington’s subsequent involvement in the French and Indian War and his command of the Virginia Regiment were all motivated by a desire for preferment. However, his real ambition lay elsewhere. He pursued with a singular determination a royal commission with comparable rank in the British regular army. Such a commission meant prestige and honor. It would give Washington clear seniority over regular officers of lower rank. His chance for a career of arms would be vastly improved. The office carried with it half-pay for life upon retirement. And he would have succeeded in emulating his half-brother Lawrence. Between 1753 and 1758, Washington politicked, petitioned, and pleaded with potentially influential civilian and military officials—all to no avail.

174

George Washington

He even prevailed upon Dinwiddie to give him two leaves of absence to enable him to travel and present his case in person to influential colonial governors and commanders. His frustration was pronounced. Disillusioned with his futile efforts to gain a royal commission in the British regular army, in December 1758 he retired to Mount Vernon with resentment, bitterness, and a sense of utter failure.11 His dignity, reputation, and honor had been severely eroded—his grandiose self seriously challenged. MARTHA CUSTIS WASHINGTON In 1749 Daniel Parke Custis, age thirty-seven, married Martha Dandridge, then eighteen. He was a wealthy man and a member of the Virginia gentry; she came from a more modest background, but had charm, tact, and wit. In addition to property in England, Daniel Custis owned over 17,000 acres of Virginia land, and the family lived in a very comfortable style at a plantation named White House. Having become a member of the Williamsburg society, during the social season Martha Custis made the rounds at the balls. At one of those balls she met George Washington. When Daniel Parke Custis died in 1757, Martha, at age twenty-six, became one of the wealthiest widows in Virginia. She controlled 6,000 acres of land, several lots in Williamsburg, about 250 slaves, and 10,000 pounds in liquid assets. Attracted as much by her wealth as by her charm, George Washington became a regular at the White House plantation, though his amorous thoughts continued to revolve around Sally Fairfax. Nonetheless, the young colonel became particularly attentive to Martha’s two children, Jacky and Patsy, four and two years old, respectively; he did all he could to entertain and please them. Soon engaged, George and Martha were married on January 6, 1759. Having brought Martha to Mount Vernon, the Washingtons and the Fairfaxes remained good neighbors and friends until 1773, when the latter departed for England. Though the Washingtons had a satisfactory marriage, George was to maintain that the basis of their relationship was not “enamoured love” but “friendship.”12 Smarting from his unrequited love for Sally Fairfax, he persuaded himself to believe that love must be under the control of “reason.” Accordingly, Washington’s relationship with Martha is best described as a business partnership. Moreover, since his was a childless marriage, producing no direct descendants, Washington may well have been moved to assure his immortality in other ways. In any event, Martha soon created for George what he had not experienced since early childhood: a comfortable home. In fact, Martha made it possible for George to pursue domestic and social felicity with complete abandon. Between 1759 and 1774 (the First Continental Congress), in ad-

The Young Washington

175

dition to being a major planter and a famous burgess, Washington devoted his time to playing cards, going dancing, attending cockfights, going to the races, hunting foxes, breeding horses and dogs, going to the theater, expanding and renovating Mount Vernon, entertaining friends and visitors, and enjoying Madeira, rum, and brandy. He dressed fashionably in fine custom-made garments specially ordered from London. He also personally designed at least two family coats of arms, as befitting his growing stature. Shortly after his retirement from the Virginia Regiment, Washington ordered for his parlor mantelpiece busts of six famous soldiers: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the Great, Prince Eugene of Austria, and the Duke of Marlborough. Consistent with the young Washington’s grandiose personality, this action suggests admiration for and identification with some of the greatest military heroes in history. Much to Washington’s annoyance, however, his London agent (Robert Cary & Co.) substituted statues of six civilian figures from antiquity. George and Martha Washington ordered from England a variety of luxury goods: clothes, furniture, rugs, china, glass, decorations, candles, spices, sweetmeats, wine by the butt (150 gallons), and even snuff. The Washingtons had twelve or thirteen servants, including a cook, a waiter, an ironing woman, a sewing woman, a nurse, and two nannies.

LAND In colonial America land acquisition was a passion with almost everyone, including George Washington’s ancestors. For George, however, in more than one way land had a special significance. As early as 1750, when he was only eighteen years old, George invested his earnings from surveying assignments in about 1,500 acres of land. Two years later, he acquired another 500 acres. Prior to his death in 1752, Lawrence Washington had devised Mount Vernon to his wife Anne during her lifetime and, after her death, to their daughter Sarah. He had also stipulated that if George survived Anne and Sarah, he would be entitled to Mount Vernon. Sarah died soon after Lawrence, and Anne remarried in 1754. In December of that year Anne leased Mount Vernon to George Washington for the rest of her life. The rent for the property and its eighteen slaves was fixed at 15,000 pounds of tobacco per year. Anne died in 1761, making George Washington the master of Mount Vernon—and large acres of surrounding land—for the rest of his life. By the time he was twenty-one years old, Washington controlled some 6,000 acres. Following his return to civilian life in 1758, George Washington compensated for military disappointment by pursuing wealth and social distinction, both symbolized in the acquisition of land. Over the next sixteen

176

George Washington

years (that is, up until the First Continental Congress), Washington’s drive for land was resolute, relentless, and obsessive. By the mid-1760s, partly as a result of his marriage to Martha, Washington’s landholdings had grown to 15,000 acres, but he remained unsatiated. Eyeing not only Virginia but the Ohio country and Mississippi as well, Washington persisted in the pursuit of land. His immediate foci of attention were a gubernatorial promise and a royal proclamation authorizing the granting of land to the veterans of the French and Indian War. With considerable resourcefulness, he politicked, maneuvered, petitioned, advertised in newspapers, and organized expeditions to survey the land— all in the hope of expanding his holdings. The coup de graˆce, however, came in 1774: the British government disallowed his claims to thousands of acres by finally ruling that the grants of Crown lands applied only to the British regulars and not to the colonial militia. George Washington’s quest for land was resolute, even when he knew he was not entitled to it. In 1754 Gov. Robert Dinwiddie issued a proclamation encouraging soldiers to enlist in the Virginia Regiment by offering 200,000 acres of land on the south and east side of the Ohio River. The proclamation intended to exclude officers, which Washington understood to be the case. The royal proclamation of 1763 prohibited settlement of Indian territory west of the Alleghenies, but almost no one took it seriously. Washington dismissed it as a temporary expedient to mollify the Native Americans. He declared that only a fool would bypass the opportunity to acquire new land. The western movement, he believed, was inexorable. In 1768 the royal proclamation of 1763 was rescinded. Washington immediately petitioned Robert Dinwiddie’s successor, Gov. Norbonne Berkley Botetcourt, for an allotment of over 20,000 acres, recommending his friend William Crawford as the surveyor for the land. Washington’s petition was approved in December 1769, and Crawford surveyed some choice land for Washington—“the cream of the country,” as the latter put it.13 In November 1771 Gov. John Murray Dunmore, Botetcourt’s successor, finally decided to grant the 200,000 acres of bounty lands Dinwiddie had promised in 1754. According to a new formula, on a graded scale depending on rank, field officers (including Washington) were allotted 15,000 acres each, whereas privates received 400 acres apiece. Either directly or through agents, Washington maneuvered to purchase over 5,000 acres from other veterans. In so doing, he did not hesitate to misrepresent or underestimate the value or quality of other soldiers’ claims. In all, Washington acquired over 20,000 acres of bounty land. By the time he died in 1799, George Washington controlled over 63,000 acres of land in Virginia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, and Kentucky. He had about 300 slaves. His property—exclusive of his wife’s and the Mount

The Young Washington

177

Vernon estate—was valued at over 500,000 dollars. He was one of the richest men in all of America. TOWARD IMMORTALITY Following the example of his half-brother Lawrence, soldier Washington and planter Washington had developed an interest in politics. Having been elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758 (following a loss only a year earlier), Washington went to Williamsburg in 1759 for his first session in the Virginia Assembly. His fellow burgesses voted him their thanks for his services in the French and Indian War. Washington was most pleased, for this was the kind of recognition that he always sought. Public acclaim would be repeated in Washington’s reelection to the House of Burgesses in 1761, 1765, 1768, 1771, and 1774. Washington’s service as a burgess was most uninspired and unimpressive. He had no political interests and articulated no political programs. There were times when he did not even attend the Assembly at all. He appears to have treated being a burgess simply as another confirmation of his rising social status and a tribute to his role model, Lawrence. As the issues of the revolutionary period crystallized—taxation, representation, the rights of man—Washington found his sympathies to be with the colonial rebels. Moreover, he was personally outraged—and radicalized—by the Stamp and Navigation Acts, for he was a heavy buyer and exporter to England. Washington’s rebellion against Britain may have had its genesis in his much earlier rebellion against his tyrannical mother. In any event, it would seem, the American Revolution intruded on Washington’s quest for land. Meanwhile, in the fall of 1773, as a burgess, Washington was elected as one of seven Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress. Having been reelected a delegate to the Second Congress, Washington arrived in Philadelphia wearing his military uniform, the only one in the assembly. He had brought with him from Mount Vernon the uniform he had designed for the Virginia Regiment, complete with his sword—and now he was wearing it daily, as if to say to his fellow delegates that the time had come to take on the British. John Adams wrote Abigail: “Colonel Washington appears at Congress in uniform, and by his great experience and abilities in military matters he is of much service to us.”14 George Washington’s selection as commander-in-chief was not a foregone conclusion. Artemas Ward and John Hancock of Massachusetts were serious contenders, as were others. But John Adams and his associates ceaselessly lobbied for Washington as a means of counterbalancing the radicalism of the New England states. Meanwhile, Washington’s military uniform was a rather pointed way of indicating his ardor for the command post.

178

George Washington

On June 15, 1775, the Congress unanimously named Washington general and unanimously elected him commander-in-chief. The following day, he rose to address the assembly, saying in part: Mr. President: Though I am truly sensible of the high honor done me in this appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty and exert every power I possess in their service, and for support of the glorious cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation.15

Though Washington spoke with fitting humility, his ambition and resolve— his preoccupation with honor, dignity, and reputation—soon overcame any residual doubt. The new distinction, needless to say, put George Washington on the road to immortality. Moreover, in his new capacity, he would command all the forces of all the thirteen states—and he would fight those who had denied him a commission in the British regular army. CONCLUSION In 1948 Douglas Southall Freeman16 painted a classic character portrait of the young George Washington in terms of two sets of attributes. On the one hand, he depicted Washington as moral, just, patient, amiable, conscientious, self-confident, and able to win the affection of subordinates. On the other, he found Washington humorless, ambitious, acquisitive, obstinate, suspicious of rivals, extraordinarily sensitive, and unable to generate enthusiasm among fellow officers or superiors. Although Freeman’s assessment is largely accurate as far as it goes, given the intellectual constraints of the time at which he wrote, he clearly did not go far enough. As we know, social-psychological studies of leaders constitute a relatively recent phenomenon. In more contemporary times, Schwartz17 analyzes the role of the mature Washington as a “collective symbol” for the embryonic nation that was to become the United States of America. Situating Washington in the midst of social scientific theories from such giants as Durkheim, Freud, Simmel, and Weber, Schwartz delineates the socially constructed persona of Washington as he was and is presented to his constituency and the functions of that persona in the creation of a nation. In a few words, idealized and idolized, Washington emerges as the right leader at the right time and place, possessing the requisite talents and skills and virtues and responding to the people’s need for unity, community, and identity. Impressive though it is, Schwartz’s study is of limited value for our pur-

The Young Washington

179

poses. For one thing, he focuses on the external, social dynamics of Washington’s symbolic persona, whereas we are primarily concerned with the inner, psychological dynamics that propelled the young Washington. (Only on pages 185–188—and almost in passing—do we learn about such Washington traits as moodiness, crankiness, temper, and possible meanness.) Equally important, Schwartz’s concern is with Washington’s revolutionary and postrevolutionary career, whereas we focus on his prerevolutionary years. In this chapter, we have characterized the young Washington as a lovedeprived, grandiose, and ambitious personality relentlessly in pursuit of admiration, power, status, and wealth and obsessively concerned with his honor, dignity, and reputation. When combined with ability, resolve, mastery, skill, and opportunity, this psychodynamic construct enabled Washington to succeed to the point of emerging as the Founding Father. It is now time to place our interpretive themes in broader theoretical contexts. We borrowed the concept of grandiosity from Volkan and others, as noted in the Introduction. Our concern with love deprivation has been inspired by Lucille Iremonger,18 who studied twenty-four successive British prime ministers, from Spencer Perceval in 1809 to Neville Chamberlain who resigned in 1940. She found that fifteen of the twenty-four men (62.5 percent) had lost one or both parents before reaching age fifteen. She considered this figure exceptionally high, the risk of bereavement for the general population having been 10–15 percent. For theoretical insight, Iremonger turned to the French psychoanalyst Maryse Choisy, whose study of bastards had led her to theorize that the child who is deprived of love in the family quests after power and acclaim in the political arena. Moreover, Choisy discovered, bastards develop a harsh and rigid superego, are very narcissistic, and are driven to fantasies of omnipotence. Furthermore, Choisy found, bastards are characterized by abnormal sensitivity, chronic depression, and a belief in magic. Finally, Choisy maintained, given the absence of a father figure, bastards hark back to the myth of Phaeton, not Oedipus. (In Greek mythology, Phaeton, being unsure of his legitimacy, developed illusions of grandeur and supernatural powers; sought grandiose compensation in acclaim and adoration for childhood deprivation; being inexperienced, recklessly drove an uncontrollable chariot across the sky threatening the cosmic order; and was stricken dead by a thunderbolt.) Iremonger theorized that losing one or both parents in childhood produces most of the same consequences of bastardy. She wrote: The deeper I plunged into the lives of my chosen two dozen, the more strongly did a pattern emerge. Not only had many of these men suffered the traumatic and unusual experience of lack of love in their early years. So many were abnormally sensitive, reserved, and isolated. So many demonstrated the most powerful drives

180

George Washington

for attention and affection. So many . . . had benefitted in childhood from the devotion and inspired teaching . . . of outstanding and immensely self-confident mentors. . . . In so many, too, the need for, and dependence on . . . love was blatant, even compulsive. Perhaps more significant still, their hunger for it when it was denied them, and their desperate search to find it, was often almost pitiable.19

Our delineation of the young Washington as a love-deprived, grandiose, and ambitious personality relentlessly in pursuit of love, admiration, power, and status is also consistent in many ways with Horney’s discussion of the detached personality and with Post’s analysis of the narcissistic type. According to Horney,20 the detached person (in this case, man) deals with others in such a way that he is most at home. He is aloof, moves away from people, and keeps others at a safe distance. Experiencing a sense of social estrangement, the detached persons “draw around themselves a kind of magic circle which no one may penetrate.”21 They stress privacy, self-sufficiency, and resourcefulness. They may well develop a sense of superiority and uniqueness. Accordingly, detachment may be accompanied by a search for glory, power, and acclaim. These attributes, needless to say, fit the young Washington with great accuracy: no wonder that aside from Lawrence Washington and George William Fairfax, he had great difficulty developing and maintaining friendships. Post22 has undertaken impressive syntheses of the narcissistic personality, making important contributions of his own. The study of narcissism was pioneered by Freud in a 1914 paper titled “On Narcissism: An Introduction.”23 It was subsequently applied to the study of the leader, who Freud found to be “of a masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic, self-confident and independent.”24 Making a distinction between benign or normal narcissism and neurotic or malignant narcissism,25 it appears that the young Washington squarely fits the former category. More specifically, the young Washington had a “mirror hungry” personality, one that requires a continuous stream of admiration to shore up his grandiose self.26 Historically, Post notes, many leaders have been “successful narcissists.” After all, at one level narcissism is nothing more than extreme self-confidence, and it is the fusion of selfconfidence and ability and opportunity that makes for success.27 In this chapter we have deliberately substituted “grandiose self” or “grandiose personality” or “grandiosity” for narcissism in order to avoid potentially negative connotations associated with narcissistic personality— even of the benign variety. We close this chapter fully cognizant of the limitations of psychobiography as a mode of scholarly analysis. For one thing, unavoidably the individual’s psychology is analyzed at a distance. Moreover, in focusing on the psychodynamics animating the young Washington, perhaps we have paid insufficient attention to the broader cultural, social, political, and ec-

The Young Washington

181

onomic contexts in which Washington’s personality evolved and matured. But as we said in the Introduction, this chapter is only a beginning. Much remains to be accomplished by social and behavioral scientists in future works. NOTES 1. Although age forty-three cannot be considered “young”—particularly in 1775—it will serve as a logical and convenient cutoff point. Moreover, having won the Revolutionary War and having served two pioneering terms as president, the aging Washington underwent a psychological transformation: a grandiose personality became increasingly more magnanimous. 2. See especially Vamik D. Volkan and Norman Itzkowitz, The Immortal Atatu¨rk: A Psychobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) and the sources cited therein. 3. Cf. John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), p. 6. 4. Cf. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington, 4 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965–1972), I: chapter 2; Francis Rufus Bellamy, The Private Life of George Washington (New York: Crowell, 1951), chapter 2; Samuel Eliot Morison, “The Young Man Washington,” in ed. James Morton Smith, George Washington: A Profile (New York: Hill & Wang [1951], 1969), passim. 5. Quoted in Ferling, The First of Men, p. 6. 6. Prevalent in the Washington literature, Mary Ball is an unflattering abbreviation for Mary Ball Washington, suggesting that she was too self-absorbed to be a “compleat” Washington. 7. WGW I: 159. Throughout this chapter WGW shall stand for George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, 39 vols., ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington: Government Printing Office). In all citations WGW will be followed by volume and page numbers. 8. Full text in WGW, II: 287–289. 9. Full text in WGW, II: 292–294. 10. Full text in WGW, XXXVI: 262–265; emphasis added. 11. Cf. Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), pp. 58–59; Flexner, George Washington, pp. 121–122, 143– 148; Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: An Abridgment in One Volume by Richard Harwell of the Seven-Volume George Washington (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), p. 138. 12. Quoted in Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press [1896], 1971), p. 84; Flexner, George Washington, I, p. 204. 13. WGW, XXXII: 407. 14. Quoted in Flexner, George Washington, I, p. 334. 15. WGW, III: 292–293. 16. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, completed by John A. Carroll and Mary W. Ashworth, 7 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1948– 1957), II, chapter 21.

182

George Washington

17. Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, 1987). 18. Lucille Iremonger, The Fiery Chariot: A Study of the British Prime Ministers and the Search for Love (London: Secker & Warburg, 1970). 19. Ibid., II; cf. pp. 308–309. 20. Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: Norton, 1937); Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945); Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle toward Self-Realization (New York: Norton, 1950). 21. Horney, Our Inner Conflicts, p. 77. 22. Jerrold M. Post, “Dreams of Glory and the Life Cycle: Reflections on the Life Course of Narcissistic Leaders,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 12 (1984), pp. 49–60; Jerrold M. Post, “Current Concepts of the Narcissistic Personality: Implications for Political Psychology,” Political Psychology 14 (1993), pp. 99–121. 23. Cited in Post, “Current Concepts,” p. 100. 24. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (New York: Bantam Books [1921], 1960), p. 71. 25. Post, “Current Concepts,” p. 103. 26. See Post, “Current Concepts,” pp. 115–116. 27. Post, “Current Concepts,” pp. 99–100.

10 The Nature and Development of George Washington’s Statesmanship: 1753–1783 Kent A. Kirwan

In the past, many leading scholarly studies portrayed George Washington as more figurehead than statesman, even though these accounts lauded his excellent character and his guidance through the Revolutionary War. Scholarly praise accrued to James Madison, who came to the fore in the Constitutional Convention, and Alexander Hamilton, who was the guiding genius of the Washington administration. Today it is better understood that Washington was no puppet but a statesman in his own right.1 But what was the quality of his statesmanship? Traditionally scholars characterized him as a Lockean.2 More recently, though, leading studies portray Washington as a “Country Party” republican.3 While there are reasons for both characterizations, Washington’s statesmanship in its most essential respects is, in fact, a modern reflection of the Aristotelian gentleman ruler. In the following analysis, I emphasize the Locke-Aristotle contrast, leaving the question of the adequacy of describing Washington as a “Country Party” republican for later consideration. I limit my analysis to the period from his youth and entrance into the French and Indian War to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. That Washington grew up in two different worlds sowed the seeds of his statesmanship. The first was the savage world of the frontier, a life not far from Locke’s “state of nature.” A large, well-built youth with the strength, stamina, and grace of the natural athlete, Washington enjoyed hunting, riding, and exploring. He also encountered the frontier as a surveyor of

184

George Washington

land and as one who looked upon the land as his primary means of accumulating wealth. The second world was that of the Virginia aristocracy. Washington entered this life at the age of eleven (owing to the death of his father) when his upbringing was undertaken by his half-brother Lawrence, who had married into one the most prominent families in the state, the Fairfaxes of Belvoir. Lawrence, a soldier/statesman himself, and Col. William Fairfax became his models and teachers. Here Washington was introduced to the classical idea of the gentleman, especially by Sir William, who taught him about honor, duty, the common good, noble simplicity, courage, and generosity as these virtues were spoken of by Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and other Stoic philosophers. The absorption of such ideas was the foundation of Washington’s self-education. He also learned those manners and arts that enabled him to appreciate the gentler virtues. Washington’s career as a soldier/statesman began with his appointment as a major with the Virginia militia and his mission to the Ohio country to warn off the French and assess their military strength. Behaving like a seasoned diplomat with both the French and the Indians, he achieved everything expected of him. The journal he kept of his experience was published in both Virginia and London, and he tasted a modicum of fame. It was on this mission that Washington fell off a raft into an ice-choked river and, after climbing back on the raft, spent a night on an island without a fire or dry clothes and didn’t even catch a cold. This kind of stamina combined with great feats of strength, athletic ability, and fearlessness led others to see him as a potentially great warrior. In his first battle his troops killed a French diplomat, an act that some cite as the beginning of the French and Indian War. In his next battle, however, a superior French force at Fort Necessity defeated Washington. While his raw courage was greatly admired, his recklessness damaged his reputation with the imperial establishment who could give him the royal commission after which he hungered. Because a reorganization of the Virginia militia reduced his rank from lieutenant colonel to captain, Washington resigned his commission. Shortly thereafter, however, he joined General Braddock’s staff as an aide. In Braddock’s disastrous defeat Washington distinguished himself for conspicuous gallantry and was the only officer on horseback who wasn’t killed. He, however, lost respect for British military prowess and had his pride in the colonial soldier justified. His reward for the service under Braddock was the command of Virginia’s forces with the mission of defending her enormous frontier. Lacking adequate troops and equipment, he made the best of an impossible situation and gained the respect of his officers and troops in the process. During this period he also strove mightily to gain a royal commission. When it became clear that a commission was not

Washington’s Statesmanship

185

forthcoming, he resigned in December 1758, two years before the war was over. Following the example of Douglas Southall Freeman, let us assess Washington’s development at age twenty-seven as he ended his military career under the British, married a wealthy widow, and was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses. Freeman saw Washington as having learned how to assume responsibility, how to lead, and above all, how to administer a military organization under the worst conditions, making the best use of his men and material.4 Underlying the success of his leadership was Washington’s understanding of distributive justice. His devotion to the merit principle was unqualified and earned him the deep respect of his officers and men. He also combined kindness and strict discipline, learning from experience what combination worked best. He had trouble controlling a fierce temper and great pride, which led him to adopt, on occasion, an attitude toward his superiors that verged on insubordination. At the same time, he fawned over those same superiors in his chase after a royal commission. Further influencing his behavior was his decreased patriotism. Wounded and angered at discrimination against colonial officers and troops, he was gradually losing respect for British justice. He began to see America’s colonial status in terms of a neglect of our needs, a thwarting of our interests, and a violation of our rights. Maturing personally and politically, he turned to make his mark as a planter/businessman and legislator. Proud but no longer cocky, ambitious but no longer reckless, he became increasingly thoughtful and a good listener. The prudence he formerly lacked began to inform his natural intelligence, deepening his capacity for wise judgment. Leaving the rough, hard military life of the frontier, Washington entered the polished, refined political life of the Virginia aristocracy. For the next sixteen years he would devote himself to agriculture, to business, and to politics. Agriculture was both his profession and his passion. Politics was his duty. As a planter he came to see much earlier than others that tobacco was not a profitable crop under the conditions imposed by the British system of doing business, a system that made the planter take all the risks while the merchants made unconscionable profits. Striving not only for wealth but for economic independence, Washington stopped growing tobacco in 1766 and turned to wheat, corn, oats, and other crops. He also kept livestock, made whiskey, ran two flour mills, a herring fishery, a dairy, and a foundry. At the same time he increased his land holdings. The skills that had served him so well as a military administrator now served him as the administrator of a huge and diverse estate. As a businessman, Washington was very shrewd but not greedy. He did not like to charge interest and was very generous with those who had fallen on hard times. His service to the community grew along with his prosperity. He was a vestryman of Truro parish, the judge of a county court, and a

186

George Washington

trustee of the city of Alexandria. His primary service, however, was as a member of the House of Burgesses. Washington was elected to Burgesses as a war hero, but as a legislator he did not choose to play the commander. Rather he was above all a quiet listener acknowledging that he had a great deal to learn. His patience, his calm demeanor, his reasonableness, and above all his modesty earned him the respect of his fellow legislators. Sensible of his lack of formal education, his intellectual modesty was the ground of his capacity to grow in understanding. Further, his sensitivity to other people’s opinions and his kindness led him to present his own opinions in a way that most appealed to the reason and prejudices of those whom he sought to influence. He was not eloquent, but he was very persuasive. Washington understood the Stamp Act of 1765 in terms of his own experience with the British. As an officer in the British army he was not taken seriously because he was a colonial. His military advice on those matters where he had had considerable experience was not heeded, and his considerable claim to merit a regular commission was ignored. By the time of his resignation, he had lost respect not only for British military prowess but for British justice as well. As a planter, businessman, and land speculator, his ambitions were similarly thwarted. The link between economic exploitation and political oppression was obvious to him. He saw the colonies’ proper role as partners rather than as dependents whose primary role was to serve as a source of raw materials for the empire. He was also a continentalist who recognized very early the enormous wealth and potential greatness of America. He was loyal to the British Constitution but he was proud to be an American. His first prominent act as a revolutionary was to present a plan for nonimportation of British goods. He saw the plan not only as a response that the British would more likely heed (as opposed to pleas to the King) but as an opportunity for America to develop her own manufacturing and commercial enterprises to gain a measure of economic independence. After the Stamp Act, Washington saw a pattern of British behavior subversive of American rights protected by the British Constitution. Though he disapproved of the Boston Tea Party, he disapproved even more of the British reaction that followed (the Intolerable Acts). Any doubts that he might have harbored about Britain’s intentions were removed by these actions. The boldness of his views is expressed in the Fairfax Resolves. Elected to the First Continental Congress, Washington was more the keen observer than the vocal leader, but he was firm in supporting the demand for recognition of American liberties based on natural right and the British Constitution. At the Second Continental Congress, meeting after the battles of Lexington and Concord, he was a leader and was elected commander-inchief of our yet-to-be-formed continental army. Washington’s selection as commander-in-chief of the army was more

Washington’s Statesmanship

187

than a military choice. While he was the most prominent soldier in the colonies, he was also a legislator with sixteen years of experience, a member of both the First and Second Continental Congresses, a wealthy and successful businessman, and a Southerner who could unify the country behind the cause. Since the army was the revolution, its leader had to symbolize the cause. While Washington was not a militant, neither was he a moderate who stood halfway between those who rested their hopes on appeals to the king and those who wanted war. He knew, perhaps earlier than all the rest, that appeals to the king were fruitless, and while he did not look forward to shedding the blood of his countrymen, he yearned for some form of independence consistent with the requirements of natural right and the principles of the British Constitution. As he so appropriately put it, “Can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?”5 It was his character that best explains why he was chosen. His dignified bearing, his calmness, and his excellent judgment earned respect and inspired confidence. His sobriety and his modesty, the purity of his devotion to the cause expressed especially in his insistence on no salary, his willingness to take on and sacrifice all to the enormous challenge, and his affirmation that he was a citizen first and a soldier second inspired trust. Arriving in Boston to build an army while holding off the British, Washington earned the warm support of New England’s political leaders by his unfailing tact, devotion to duty, and good humor. With their help he created rumors of his strength to conceal his weakness. By outfoxing the British he caused them to withdraw. This victory without bloodshed and loss of property created an aura of mastery and made Washington the symbol of the Revolution. Reality set in, however, when the war moved to New York. Here Washington was outgeneraled and beaten by an enormous and professional army and navy at Long Island. Though his retreat was masterful, he lost Fort Lee, and because of his reliance on Nathaniel Greene’s judgment or his own indecisiveness, he allowed the capture of 2,800 troops at Fort Washington. By the end of his retreat his army, through casualties, losses, and desertions, had been reduced to about one-quarter of its original size. This was the low point for Washington both militarily and psychologically. He was exhausted, and his judgment was clouded. He learned two lessons: he needed to build a professional army and, until he built one, he must fight a defensive war. Due to the crippling policy of short enlistments, moreover, his army was about to dissolve as the year 1776 came to an end. In desperation he successfully attacked a Hessian garrison at Trenton and shortly thereafter won a similar victory at Princeton. While the nation’s spirit was revived, the original rage militaire was dead.6 Never would Washington’s army be anywhere close to full strength, and his need for food, clothes, shoes, tents, weapons, ammunition, money for pay, medical supplies, and other necessities was unremitting.

188

George Washington

Brandywine and Germantown were defeats for the Continental Army troops, but it was very clear that a professional army was in the making. Washington and America received a major boost with French recognition and the alliance that followed. While Washington welcomed French aid, he made it clear to Congress and his army that we must depend on ourselves. The battle of Monmouth, while not a victory, left no doubt that a professional army had been built. The British, frustrated with their inability to conquer Washington, and now at war with France, shifted their focus southward and in 1780 captured Charleston and routed Gates at Camden. But in that same year Rochambeau’s army and the French navy arrived and, in 1781, joined Washington in that beautifully coordinated, stunning, and decisive victory that was Yorktown. Militarily the war was over. Washington’s perseverance was rewarded. Perhaps in terms of military strategy, Washington was not a great general. But, given how much he had to learn upon becoming commander-inchief and considering how much and how quickly he did learn, it is difficult to make an unqualified judgment. Then there are the extraordinary difficulties he had to face, not only the lack of almost everything an army needs but the economic and political contexts within which he labored. But if not a great general, he was a great fighter, a superb administrator, and above all a great leader. His military success consists in the fact that he gradually created a professional army and kept it alive. After Trenton and Princeton it became clear to the British that they could not win the war unless they conquered Washington. This they failed to do. As a commander Washington was a strict disciplinarian with his officers and troops but within a republican context. For the most part his soldiers were independent farmers who, unlike their British counterparts, lived in a relationship of rough equality with their fellow citizens. Washington had to earn their respect. He did this with his bravery and justice, his wisdom and perseverance. His everyday kindness and his sensitivity to the hardships they all shared won their devotion and earned Washington the love accorded to a good father. Washington’s visible virtue was also a beacon to the American people. He never lost sight and never let his troops lose sight of the fact that the war for independence was being fought for the American people. Even when he had to take their property to support the army, which he did only when absolutely necessary and then with great reluctance, he made it clear that their common cause required it. The British, by contrast, all too often neglected the crucial task of winning public support and sometimes raped and plundered. As an administrator, Washington got everything that could be gotten from Congress and the states. Though deeply frustrated and angered by the confederal political system within which he worked, his deference to Congress, even when its quality declined, never wavered. His loyalty to them increased their already great trust in him. His relationships with state

Washington’s Statesmanship

189

governors and legislatures were also built on mutual respect and trust. Knowing that many feared a professional army, he did everything possible to make the army trustworthy and, at the same time, to assure political leaders that there was only one people, with no distinction between civilian and military, engaged in a common cause. He approached all the other leaders as if their devotion to the cause was as pure and intense as his own. By holding them to the highest standards of unselfish patriotism, he led them to redouble their efforts on behalf of the army. And, though the states often fell far short of what Washington asked of them, he never stopped appealing to their better nature. As a diplomat Washington was also superb in artfully reconciling the tensions that arose between the democratic Americans and our aristocratic French allies. In short, the war was the revolution. In fighting the war, Washington led the country. In leading the country, he transcended his military role of commander-in-chief to become the incipient nation’s chief executive and the model of republican statesmanship. What was the character of this statesmanship as Washington embodied and demonstrated it in the years from 1753 to 1783? Was he merely a Lockean statesman motivated ultimately by comfortable self-preservation? Or was he an Aristotelian gentleman animated by striving for human excellence? Or was he more than a Lockean but less than an Aristotelian? It seems clear that Washington was a Virginia gentleman formed more by the aristocratic Fairfax family than by the more democratic influence of the frontier. Yet he forsook the comforts of plantation life for the difficult and dangerous military life in the wilderness. This experience not only toughened his character, it also deepened his practical wisdom. In the years between his retirement from the military and his appointment as commander-in-chief of the American army, he became a wealthy man. Wealth was important to him but as a means to an honorable life. He was very generous, and a good case could be made that he was liberal in the Aristotelian sense. In becoming a revolutionary leader he risked, and he knew that he risked, all the wealth that he had acquired. His quest for honor was unquestioned, and here he is clearly not a Lockean. What was the ground of Washington’s honor? The love of fame? From the time he was appointed commander-in-chief of the continental army, he became the symbol of the revolution. Congress struck a medal to honor him after the British withdrawal from Boston before he had even engaged in battle. Though he suffered defeat at Long Island and at Brandywine and Germantown and allowed the British to take Philadelphia, his stature among the people was not tarnished. They began to celebrate his birthday and name their children after him. He had replaced King George in their affections. He became George, the patriot king. But the acclaim, though enjoyed, was never taken too seriously. More than popular acclaim he valued the esteem of those he considered wise and

190

George Washington

virtuous. Still his words and his behavior point toward living up to his own standards of excellence as the measure of his worth. His most conspicuous model was Plutarch’s and Addison’s Cato.7 The basis of Cato’s honor was his virtue, classical republican virtue. Perhaps the incident at Newburgh in 1783 best clarifies the ground of Washington’s honor. Throughout the war Washington’s republican virtue led him scrupulously to subordinate the army to civil authority. At war’s end, however, the army was being disbanded without being paid. The states would not allow Congress to do anything. Hamilton and the Morrises wanted the army and the government’s creditors jointly to force the states to strengthen Congress by giving them tax-levying authority so that debts owed to the army and the creditors might be paid. An anonymous address to the officers called a meeting to urge mutinous action. Washington condemned this meeting and called one of his own. Denouncing the anonymous address, he made clear his sympathy with the plight of his officers. He had told Congress that disbanding the army without pay was the height of ingratitude. But then he played upon their sense of shame should they either desert their country or turn against it. He urged them not to “cast a shade over glory so justly acquired,” for to sully that glory would tarnish their “sacred honor.”8 Finally, he began to read them a reassuring letter from a member of Congress. But he couldn’t see it clearly, and pausing to take out his spectacles, he told them, “I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”9 His officers wept openly, and the contemplated mutiny crumbled. As Thomas Jefferson later reflected, “The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of the liberty it was intended to establish.”10 Washington was not so much demonstrating his loyalty to a Congress unable to govern under the Articles of Confederation as he was to “the cause.” The cause was establishing republican government or liberty. How did Washington understand it? First, long before the revolution, he was very much aware of how American’s colonial status had restricted his liberty economically and politically. He understood liberty primarily in terms of the opportunity for self-government. And he saw the opportunity for self-government essentially in terms of growth and fulfillment. This included more than the opportunity for national prosperity. It meant, more importantly, the acquisition of the dignity that comes from living virtuously. Understanding individual and political liberty as a natural right, he also knew that human beings are not equally virtuous. Throughout the war, he feared that the selfishness of the American people would conquer their virtue. Though he strove mightily to establish a republic, his war experience taught him the fragility of republics and that their success depends upon citizen virtue. Thus for Washington the distinction between liberty and license was crucial. Realizing fully the extent

Washington’s Statesmanship

191

to which self-interest governs human nature, he also witnessed and relied upon the extraordinary patriotism of that core of officers and men in the continental army and the devotion of those stalwarts in Congress and the states who did their utmost to help the army achieve victory. This display of virtue nourished his faith in republicanism. Washington was not an educated man and was very much aware of what he did not know. But he loved learning and throughout his career regularly sought the advice of those more learned whom he respected. However, he learned early in the war that simply following others’ advice could lead to bad decisions. Experience and his natural inclination to think for himself taught him to carefully evaluate all advice. He deliberated long and hard, but when he reached a decision he acted without hesitation. His judgment was excellent. Though not sophisticated, his practical wisdom approached high prudence. Indeed, by not having had a formal education, he was less captive to the intellectual currents of his day. His uncommon common sense made him a natural Aristotelian. Thus, while he did not deemphasize the human propensity for vice, neither did he deny our capacity for virtue. Throughout the war Washington looked forward to retirement. He treated his eight long years of war as a digression from his life as a Virginia gentleman. He looked forward to a life of leisure in which he pictured himself reading, contemplating, and conversing. From his youth he had led an extraordinarily active life, and shortly after his retirement he would return to the active life. But he conveyed the impression that he was not fulfilled by victory in war or by the public acclaim he received. He made it clear that he took pride in doing his public duty, but he also suggested that the private life was more fulfilling than the public life. It would seem that this was not so much because he sought the contemplative life as that he had not attained self-sufficiency in his public life. Washington’s life, to this point in its development, is a life guided by honor. His goal was to merit honor, and the honorable life consisted for him in the possession of the classical virtues. He was courageous, not only in battle but politically as well. As Jefferson noted, his moderation saved the revolution. His moderation consisted in a toleration of imperfection combined with a vision of excellence. Washington’s justice is legendary. He understood Aristotle’s distributive justice and practiced it in all his dealings with others. But the crux of his statesmanship is his prudence. In modern times we think of leadership as the capacity to attract, guide, and control others. We think of charisma. Washington was not deficient in this quality. But the core of his leadership was his capacity for deliberation, his practical wisdom or prudence. He lacked the brilliance of Jefferson and Hamilton, but his judgment was superior to theirs. Though he lacked formal education, his self-education produced a thoughtfulness akin to philosophical reflection. He not only learned a great deal from experience but developed the habit of careful and thor-

192

George Washington

ough reasoning, which deepened his capacity for deliberation. In summary, Washington’s standards of excellence, his aristocratic pride, his character, and his yearning for self-sufficiency point toward a statesmanship or prudence that transcended the Lockean horizon. To refine this conclusion requires consideration of the remainder of Washington’s career. NOTES 1. See James T. Flexner, George Washington, 4 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965–1972); Glenn A. Phelps, George Washington and American Constitutionalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father (New York: The Free Press), 1996. 2. For example, Robert Faulkner, The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). 3. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969); Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 4. Douglas S. Freeman, George Washington, 7 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1948–1957), vol. 2, pp. 376–396. 5. George Washington to George William Fairfax, 31 May 1775, in ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO), vol. 3, p. 292. 6. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979) pp. 25–32. 7. See Forest McDonald, “Washington, Cato and Honor: A Model for Revolutionary Leadership” in eds. Daniel Elazar and Ellis Katz, American Models of Revolutionary Leadership (New York: University Press of America, 1992), pp. 44– 56. 8. George Washington to the Officers of the Army, 15 March 1783, Writings, vol. 26, pp. 226–227. 9. Ibid., p. 222. 10. Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 16 April 1784, in Julian C. Boyd et al., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 22 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), vol. 7, pp. 106–107.

11 Washington and the Specter of Cromwell Jim Piecuch

Twice within a span of 140 years, English people took up arms to resist what they believed to be an unjust and repressive government. Both times the rebellions were led by bodies of elected representatives who claimed that they were acting only in defense of traditional English constitutional principles. Each of these elected assemblies found among their number a man of military ability whom they appointed leader of the revolutionary armed forces. Both commanding officers were of middling origin, deeply committed to their cause, and faced with the difficult task of molding a scratch collection of volunteers into a professional army capable of defeating the government’s troops. Both men won decisive military victories that earned them nationwide renown, so that eventually each came to symbolize in his own person the cause for which he fought. In both rebellions many of the soldiers who followed these hero-generals became dissatisfied at the elected leadership’s neglect of their needs and urged their commanders to seize power and remedy the injustice. In both cases, many of the elected representatives also favored the establishment of a military dictatorship to achieve the goals of the revolution. The first of these generals, Oliver Cromwell, agreed with the advocates of dictatorship. He allowed his followers to use the army to remove his enemies from parliament, and eventually became absolute ruler of his nation. But as Lord Protector of England he subverted many of the very principles for which the rebellion had been fought, and after his death the

194

George Washington

nation, while continuing to admire his military prowess, remembered him primarily as a tyrant and usurper. The second general, George Washington, reprimanded the proponents of dictatorship; when his military task was finished, he surrendered his commission to the elected representatives who had appointed him and retired to civilian life. In doing so, he enhanced his status as a national hero and his untarnished reputation was revered by subsequent generations. That Washington acted so differently from Cromwell in nearly identical situations was due in large part to the lessons that he and his contemporaries in America had learned from the seventeenthcentury dictator.1 From the time that Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the American army in June 1775, the specter of Cromwell hovered close to him. Like a specter, the Cromwellian legacy usually existed in the shadows: between the lines of addresses to the general, in subtle criticism of his actions, in fears of dictatorship thought but seldom voiced. Though clearly conscious of the similarities between his position and that of Cromwell, Washington carefully avoided all references to the Protector. Instead through his actions he made every effort to draw distinctions between himself and Cromwell and to reassure Americans that he had no interest in following Cromwell’s path to dictatorship. Although Americans in the Revolutionary era were aware of the parallels between Cromwell and Washington, the majority of Washington’s biographers have overlooked the comparisons between the two revolutionary leaders. Most fail to mention Cromwell at all, and when he does appear it is usually to illustrate the favorable contrast between his tyrannical usurpation of power and Washington’s submission to congressional authority. This follows the path of Washington’s most famous early biographer, Mason Weems, who wrote that Washington had transcended the thirst for personal power by refusing to take advantage of his popularity to become “master” of the newly independent United States, whereas “a Caesar or a Cromwell would have, at the hazard of a million of lives, made the sacrilegious attempt.”2 Alone at the opposite end of the spectrum, a recent study claims that “Washington saw himself—and the British saw him—as the Oliver Cromwell of the American Revolution,” but provides little evidence for this assertion.3 Deeper analysis of how Cromwell’s legacy influenced both eighteenth-century American attitudes toward Washington and the latter’s own behavior has been neglected. As Alfred F. Young has observed, Oliver Cromwell exercised a powerful influence on American thought, and especially that of New England, from the English civil wars of the 1640s up to and during the American Revolution. New England Puritans had staunchly supported their transatlantic brethren who fought under Cromwell during the civil wars. The more zealous had even returned to England and served in Cromwell’s army. Cromwell remained a New England hero until about 1700, when a growing

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

195

number of colonists, influenced by Whig political views, came to see him as a tyrant and usurper. Jonathan Edwards and other preachers during the Great Awakening helped restore Cromwell’s reputation by praising his religious zeal. “With Cromwell thus in popular memory, and the memory invigorated by evangelical enthusiasm, it should not be surprising that he appeared as a saviour early in the revolutionary crisis,” Young noted. As the conflict with Britain intensified in the early 1770s, “Cromwell became a central symbol” for the resistance movement in Boston.4 As printers in other colonies reprinted New England writings evoking Cromwell in newspapers and pamphlets, people throughout America became more familiar with the outlines of his career. In 1742 a writer who described the exploits of Cromwell’s grandson, privateer captain Thomas Frankland, declared that Frankland possessed “the Virtues of that Hero [Cromwell], without his Vices.”5 On the eve of the Revolution, most Americans sought a leader who fit that description. George Washington was well acquainted with the life of the Protector. He had acquired a biography of Cromwell among the books in the Custis estate,6 and since English history and the lives of past military leaders were among the few subjects he enjoyed reading, Washington must have been familiar with the volume’s contents. The book may have been among those in his library that he used to educate his stepson, Jack Custis.7 Washington’s perception of Cromwell was probably influenced as well by another book in his possession, Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Clarendon was a revolutionary who switched his allegiance to the royalist cause when he decided that Parliament had exceeded its constitutional authority. While he praised Cromwell’s “courage, industry, and judgment,” he also censured the Protector as “the greatest dissembler living” who “had all the wickedness . . . for which hell-fire is prepared.”8 Fully aware of Cromwell’s failures, Washington would be certain not to repeat them in similar circumstances. Although the records of the Continental Congress make no reference to Cromwell, thoughts of the Lord Protector were in the minds of some representatives as they discussed the appointment of an army commander in June of 1775. Military capacity and the ability to promote sectional unity among the colonies were important factors in the choice of a general, but to overlook personal character, representatives knew, could invite Cromwellian usurpation in the future. The New York assembly had advised its delegates to the Congress that one of the most important qualifications of a prospective commander was his willingness to “faithfully perform the duties of his high office, and readily lay down his power when the general weal shall require it.”9 As one historian observed, “With the ever-present examples of Caesar and Cromwell to justify anxieties about the imposition of dictatorship, Americans at war looked not to their best military man for direction but to the military man in whom they had the most trust.”10

196

George Washington

The man who nominated Washington to the post of commander-in-chief, John Adams, stressed the Virginian’s advantages of character, and Adams probably knew more about Cromwell than did any other Revolutionary leader. This was the product of both Adams’s Massachusetts origins and his own interest in Cromwell. Nearly twenty years earlier Adams and a group of friends had discussed Cromwell among other “Heroes and great Commanders.” Five years later Adams had argued in a private conversation that one could not “determine the Character of ‘Leading and respectable’ . . . from a few Victories and successes,” a standard that would have made Cromwell “the leading and most respectable Power” of his era. Adams denounced any such assessment as “ignorant and silly.” A few months later, in September 1761, Adams reiterated this point to an acquaintance who had shown him a portrait of Cromwell and praised the Lord Protector’s military skills. “Oliver was successful but not prudent nor honest, nor laudable nor imitable,” Adams recorded in his diary.11 In reporting Washington’s appointment, Adams emphasized that character was an essential ingredient, along with generalship and the promotion of colonial unity, in the selection of a commander. “I can now inform you that the Congress have made Choice of the modest and virtuous, the amiable, generous and brave George Washington, Esqr., to be the General of the American Army,” Adams wrote his wife. “This Appointment will have a great Effect, in cementing and securing the Union of these Colonies.”12 Adams’s lavish praise for Washington’s character may have been in part the product of his own assessment of the Virginian based on personal contact with Washington and on information Adams acquired in conversation with other delegates. Also, Washington’s gesture of humility in leaving the room upon recognizing that Adams was about to nominate him to the supreme command had favorably impressed the latter.13 Yet it is likely that Adams was at the same time trying to reassure himself that he had made the right decision in promoting Washington, for he could not have failed to recognize his own responsibility should Washington later follow in Cromwell’s path to dictatorship. That other members of Congress shared Adams’s and the New Yorkers’ fears of military despotism is implicit in the wording of the commission that Congress issued to Washington on June 19. After expressing confidence in the new general and enjoining all officers and men in the Continental Army to obey their commander, the Congress clearly stated its authority over Washington. “[Y]ou are . . . punctually to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as you shall receive from this or a future Congress,” the document stated. “This Commission is to continue in force until revoked by this or a future Congress.” The representatives thus delineated their superior position in the chain of command and made it clear that any military action that defied their authority would be illegal. It was the most protection that they could provide against Crom-

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

197

wellian usurpation. Three days later Congress sent Washington a more detailed set of orders that opened with another declaration that Washington’s authority was derived from that of Congress.14 As Washington traveled from Philadelphia to Boston to take command of the American forces besieging the Massachusetts port, the New York legislature restated its concern with the specter of Cromwell in its welcoming address to the general. After declaring their joy at Washington’s appointment, the representatives expressed “the most flattering Hopes of Success in the glorious Struggle for American Liberty; And the fullest Assurances that whenever this important Contest shall be decided. . . . You will chearfully resign the important Deposit committed into Your Hands, and reassume the Character of our worthiest Citizen.”15 This careful request for Washington’s promise to retire to private life after the war took up fully one-third of the address. Washington, acquainted as he was with Cromwell’s history, recognized the source of the New York assembly’s concern and strove to reassure the members with his reply. “When we assumed the Soldier,” Washington wrote, “we did not lay aside the Citizen, & we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy Hour, when the Establishment of American Liberty . . . shall enable us to return to our private Stations.”16 When Washington reached Boston he received an address from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress; surprisingly, given the importance of Cromwell in that colony’s political culture, the address ignored the matter of the commander’s postwar career. Nevertheless, Washington decided that some assurance that he had no dictatorial aims was necessary. He informed the legislators that it was only “publick spirit” that had caused him to give up “the Enjoyments of domestic Life for the Duties of my present honourable, but arduous Station.” Regarding his personal goals, he declared that “[m]y highest Ambition is to be the happy Instrument of vindicating those Rights [for which the colonies were fighting], & to see this devoted Province again restored to Peace, Liberty & Safety.”17 Washington’s message was clear: he preferred civilian life to military service, had taken command only to help his country, and had no goals other than the common desire to win a victory for American political rights. He had made the contrast between himself and Cromwell as clear as possible without outright mention of the latter. Others, however, were less circumspect. One Massachusetts farmer is known to have addressed Washington as “Great Cromwell,” while other people referred to him as “Lord Protector”;18 perhaps some of the New England troops camped at Cambridge were speaking among themselves along the same lines. If so, Washington may have hoped his reply to the Massachusetts assembly would squelch such talk. If some Americans hoped that their new general might prove another Cromwell, at least in terms of his military capacity, some Britons also

198

George Washington

sought a similar reincarnation to crush the colonial rebellion. In October 1775 a Captain Coffin arrived at Nantucket from Britain and reported that “the public talk on the streets of London was for another OLIVER CROMWELL.”19 Most American loyalists, however, did not seek a new British Cromwell to defeat their neighbors so much as they feared the rise of an American Cromwell to oppress them at home. In 1776 the publication of Common Sense, with its searing attacks on monarchy, convinced many loyalists and lukewarm revolutionaries that the creation of an American republic was imminent; from their knowledge of the history of the English republic they believed that tyranny must inevitably follow. “Rationalis,” who was still willing to fight the British if attempts at reconciliation failed, nevertheless warned readers of the Pennsylvania Gazette that “the much wished for Commonwealth . . . did not produce liberty.” On the contrary, “the moment almost after the reigns of government fell from Charles’s hands, Cromwell took them up, and governed the nation with absolute sway.” Another writer took a more extreme view, asserting that the leaders of the seventeenth-century English revolution “were not themselves friends to republics,” but had pretended to support republican government to win popular favor. “Cromwell exercised the power of a King, and of the most absolute King, under the specious name of a Protector,” the author noted, warning that a similar fate awaited the Americans because representative government was “too unwieldy” to work in the colonies. The belief that an American republic was doomed to dictatorship remained a fundamental belief for many loyalists throughout the Revolution. “America, detached from Great-Britain, must continue under military government,” a New York loyalist wrote in 1778.20 Though some loyalists must have expected that Washington would eventually assume the role of America’s Cromwell, most failed to make the obvious comparison between the two men. Yet loyalists were prompt to denounce the Continental Congress and individual Revolutionary leaders as “Oliverian.” The Congress had no more concern for the good of its followers “than Cromwell had for MAGNA CHARTA,” one loyalist wrote; another accused Maryland governor Thomas Johnson of deceiving the people “by the Oliverian preciseness of your manners.”21 Washington, however, escaped such attacks. Two factors insulated Washington from loyalist denunciations as a second Cromwell. The first was his lack of military success after March 1776, when the British army evacuated Boston. Washington’s army had been badly defeated a few months later on Long Island, giving the British control of New York City. The following year he was forced to abandon the American capital of Philadelphia to a British army under William Howe. In short, Washington had failed to replicate Cromwell’s battlefield record. Loyalist critics focused on Washington’s defeats and retreats. One writer,

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

199

responding to a report that Washington had ordered cattle gathered to supply the Continental troops, thanked “Great Washington, thou mighty son of Mars” for captured American supplies and said the recent order would provide British troops with a “treat” of “roast beef and savoury steaks.” Another claimed to have dreamed of Washington wearing a brass collar engraved with the slogan “They win the fight, that win the race,” which referred “to the maxim he had always pursued, of making a good and timely retreat.” A third writer ridiculed Washington’s reputed desire to seize New York: “He take this city,—yes, when Ice is hot.”22 The second reason for loyalist and British reluctance to compare Washington to Cromwell was that to do so might confer a respect on the American commander that in their view he did not deserve. British attitudes toward the Protector, as reflected in the loyalist press, were mixed. For example, one writer insisted that despite Cromwell’s faults, “we can never rake up his ashes without wonder and veneration.” On the other hand, a satirist using the pseudonym “Pluto” described Cromwell on trial in hell; the verdict was that “the magnitude of [Cromwell’s] crimes” earned him “diabolical esteem.” Since many loyalists avoided dignifying Washington with the title of “General” (preferring the humbler “Mister”), it is clear that they were unlikely to compare him with a leader whom some of them still esteemed.23 If British leaders and loyalists were reluctant to apply the Cromwell label to Washington, some dissatisfied Americans were more willing to do so, albeit obliquely. Philadelphia physician and member of Congress Benjamin Rush swung wildly between the desire for a dictator to guide the Revolutionary cause and fears that Washington might become a military despot. An admirer of Cromwell, Rush nonetheless often worried that Washington would emulate the Protector’s penchant for tyrannical rule. In 1775 he told an acquaintance that Washington “is a weak man. I know him well,” and needed to be surrounded by reliable officers. In December 1776 Rush had changed course, arguing that Washington “must be invested with dictatorial powers for a few months, or we are undone.” Little more than a year later he had again shifted his opinion, informing John Adams that it was fortunate the recent battle at Saratoga had been won by Horatio Gates and not Washington. Gates, he stated, had “rescued this country in a degree from its idolatry to one man.”24 Adams had already expressed similar concerns about Washington’s popularity. In February 1777 he chastised his colleagues in Congress for their increasing tendency “to idolize an image which their own hands have molten. I speak here of the superstitious veneration which is paid to General Washington.”25 Two months later he told his wife that there was no truth to rumors that Congress intended to make Washington dictator, but that he harbored fears that Washington’s popularity might eventually precipitate such an event. Shortly after learning about the American victory at

200

George Washington

Saratoga, Adams expressed relief that Washington had no part in the battle. Noting that Congress would proclaim a day of thanksgiving for the victory, Adams observed that one reason to give thanks ought to be that the Glory of turning the Tide of Arms, is not immediately due to the Commander in Chief, not to southern Troops. If it had been, Idolatry, and Adulation would have been unbounded, so excessive as to endanger our Liberties for what I know. Now We can allow a certain Citizen to be wise, virtuous, and good, without thinking him a Deity or Saviour.26

The majority of Americans, however, retained their trust in Washington, and some came to his defense. An anonymous writer in Virginia tried to allay fears of military despotism by praising Washington’s “disinterested patriotism.” This author also pointed out that Washington had voluntarily given up his military office on a previous occasion, after the French and Indian War. “[B]ehold him exchanging the din of arms for the calmer scenes of life . . . until the impending storm, which is now bursting on America, called him forth,” he wrote.27 Despite such assurances, attacks on Washington as a possible second Cromwell were renewed with vigor in 1779. In a speech on March 5 commemorating the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, William Tudor, an occasional correspondent of John Adams, publicly accused Washington of Cromwellian aspirations. Tudor warned Bostonians that they were particularly vulnerable to despotism at that particular time, for the “bondage is ever to be apprehended at the close of a successful struggle for liberty, when a triumphant army, elated with victories and headed by a popular General, may become more formidable than the tyrant that has been expelled. . . . Witness the aspiring CROMWELL!” Tudor urged the people to “resist beginnings . . . never suffer any citizen to become too popular—much less too powerful.”28 Benjamin Rush echoed Tudor’s fears. Writing as “Leonidas” in the Pennsylvania Packet of July 3, 1779, he declared ominously that “I have fears within me that I am afraid to utter. . . . Are you sure we have no Caesars nor Cromwells in this country?”29 Though such statements did little to reduce Washington’s popularity, they alarmed some military leaders. Major General John Sullivan called Washington’s attention to Tudor’s remarks in a letter of December 1, asserting that “the Faction Raised against you in 1777 . . . is not yet Destroyed,” and thought that Washington’s enemies were hoping to induce Congress to reduce the commander-in-chief’s authority by raising fears of dictatorship among the people.30 If this indeed was the intent of Rush, Tudor, and their allies, they failed. By 1780 Washington had still not shown any despotic tendencies, thus fears of his becoming a dictator continued to diminish. In fact, some Vir-

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

201

ginians suggested in 1781 that Washington be invested with dictatorial powers and sent to the state to resist Cornwallis’s invasion. Richard Henry Lee proposed the measure to Virginia’s representatives in the Continental Congress, but neither they nor the state government favored such a drastic step.31 Washington soon brought his army from New York and defeated Cornwallis at Yorktown without the need for dictatorial measures. At the close of his military career Washington twice demonstrated that he was not seeking personal power and thus finally put the specter of Cromwell to rest. While the Continental Army was encamped at Newburgh, New York in the winter of 1782–1783, the officers’ concerns over the weak national government and worries that Congress would repudiate its promise of half-pay for life festered. Officers muttered about using the army to overthrow the Congress. Anonymous addresses urging action circulated in the camps. All that was lacking was leadership. By March 1783 “a military dictatorship, with the expressed or implied approval of men like Hamilton, Greene, and Robert Morris, in which Washington himself would play the part of a reincarnated Cromwell” appeared possible.32 It was Washington who, rather than leading a coup, put an end to the threat. Learning from a circular that an officers’ meeting was planned, Washington conferred with some officers to assure himself of their support, then appeared at the meeting. He urged obedience to the Congress, read a letter from a representative promising the officers that their pay was forthcoming, and left. Half an hour after his departure, the meeting disbanded and the threat of mutiny had dissolved.33 No one could have desired a clearer demonstration of the contrast between the ambitious Cromwell and the disinterested Washington. Yet an equally clear contrast was not long in coming. On December 23, 1783, at Annapolis, Maryland, Washington publicly returned his commission as commander-in-chief to the Congress. In a ceremony that sparked an emotional response among many spectators, Washington told the representatives he had come “to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the Service of my Country.” The promise he had made to the New York and Massachusetts assemblies more than seven years earlier had been fulfilled.34 Contemporaries were quick to praise Washington for both his suppression of the Newburgh conspiracy and his voluntary resignation of command. Regarding the former incident, William Gordon wrote Washington to laud the general’s “sacred regard to the civil authority” and his skill in frustrating “the designs of heated spirits in the army.” Samuel Adams and Tristram Dalton expressed similar views. With Cromwell’s ghost banished, Washington assumed a new mantle, that of the legendary Roman patriot Cincinnatus, who after shepherding his country through its trials had lain aside his power and resumed the life of a farmer. In a poem entitled “Cincinnatus” addressed to Washington after he had surrendered his commis-

202

George Washington

sion, Philip Freneau wrote “sceptres have no charms for thee; / Virtue alone has thy regard. . . . In Vernon’s groves you shun the throne.”35 Much of the rejoicing over Washington’s resignation resulted from his finally eliminating the possibility of a Cromwellian coup. Although most Americans probably expected Washington to act as he did, some must have been uneasy until he actually resigned. His action must have surprised his former adversary, George III of England, who undoubtedly had Cromwell in mind when he expressed a wish “that America may be free from those calamities which have formerly proved, in the mother country, how essential monarchy is to the enjoyment of liberty.”36 The King is also reported to have stated that Washington would be the greatest man of the century if he willingly gave up his power.37 Many years later Thomas Jefferson praised Washington for breaking historical precedent by submitting to civil authority, and noted the difference in the respective examples left by Washington and Cromwell.38 Writing only two years after Washington’s resignation, however, John Adams praised the American people more than the commanding general for the latter’s gracious retirement. “I glory in the character of a Washington, because I know him to be only an exemplification of the American character,” Adams stated. In Adam’s opinion the virtuous character of most Americans was responsible for Washington’s commendable actions. “If his character stood alone, I should value it very little,” Adams wrote. “In the days of Pompey, Washington would have been a Caesar. . . . In the time of Charles, a Cromwell. . . . But in America he could have no other ambition than that of retiring.” Adams went on to observe that the revolution had been fought “for the good of the people,” not “to raise one great reputation.” He clearly believed that had the American people been less jealous of their liberties, Washington would have been driven, against his personal inclination, to become a dictator.39 Three years after he had retired to Mount Vernon, Washington received a gift that caused him to make his only known written reference to Cromwell. On October 26 someone named John Henry sent Washington “a Salt Cellar, a peice [sic] of antiquity; thought to be so, by the once possessor Oliver Cromwell; a great but not a good man—happy he who unites both characters.” The writer obviously believed that Washington did unite the great and good and was thus deserving of the gift. Washington replied with a circumspect letter of thanks, adding that the item’s “antiquity & having once been the property of so remarkable a character as Oliver Cromwell, would undoubtedly render it pleasing to almost any one.”40 By refusing to follow Cromwell’s example and use his army and popularity to rule the infant Republic, Washington had earned the trust of the American people. This trust was crucial to the success of the Constitutional Convention in 1787; it accounted for the prestige Washington lent to the Convention itself as well as to the document it produced.41 One writer

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

203

celebrated Washington’s coming to the convention with a poem that was eventually published in seven states; the opening lines were: “Had not great Cromwell aim’d to gain a crown, / Unsullied tales would hand his mem’ry down.”42 During the Constitutional debates the Antifederalists found Washington’s previous behavior an obstacle to their arguments against a standing army. “Brutus,” writing in the New York Journal, cited the familiar examples of Rome and the English Republic in opposing the creation of a national army, but in regard to America’s own experience could say only that “had the General . . . been possessed of the spirit of a Julius Caesar or Cromwell, the liberties of this country, had in all probability, terminated with the war.”43 But the lessons of recent experience overcame forebodings inspired by events of the distant past. Several years later, when the dispute between Federalists and their Democratic-Republican opponents intensified during Washington’s administration in the 1790s, the president’s enemies made a final resort to Cromwell in an effort to discredit him. Republican newspapers, especially Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Philadelphia Aurora, denounced the president. “Will not the world be led to conclude that the mask of political hypocrisy has been alike worn by a CAESAR, a CROMWELL, and a WASHINGTON?” Bache asked in October 1795. The National Gazette made similar accusations, but with little effect. Washington had long ago satisfied the vast majority of Americans that he was not a second Cromwell.44 Given the important influence of Oliver Cromwell in American political culture and the parallels between his career and that of George Washington, it is not surprising that Washington’s contemporaries often compared their military leader to the Lord Protector. Americans desired a general with Cromwell’s capacities, but were alert for any sign that this commander might emulate Cromwell’s despotic tendencies. George Washington, acquainted with the history of Cromwell, sought to avoid the faults of the Protector as carefully as he avoided any public references to him. It is a remarkable example of someone who profited from a knowledge of history: Washington’s awareness of Cromwell’s faults enabled him to avoid similar pitfalls. Perhaps, without the example of Cromwell, Washington might have been seduced by those clamoring for a dictatorship, and those Americans who feared that event might not have guarded so vigilantly against it. John Adams certainly thought such a possibility existed. But Washington constantly drew the contrast between himself and Cromwell, in subtle passages written to anxious assemblies and public events such as his repudiation of the officers’ plot at Newburgh and his surrender of his commission to Congress. Though his military capacity did not equal that of Cromwell, his character surpassed that of the Protector. Thus he was able to provide Americans with the leader they desired, one who possessed the heroism of a Cromwell without the latter’s tyrannical vices. In the process, he became

204

George Washington

the model of the republican hero, creating an example that has endured to the present day. Thus the failure of Cromwell’s English Republic of the 1650s provided a valuable lesson to Washington and other Americans, one that helped to ensure the survival of the American Republic of the 1770s. NOTES 1. The information on Cromwell is drawn from Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Dial Press, 1970); Toby Barnard, The English Republic, 1649–1660 (New York: Longman, 1997); and John Morrill, ed., Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Longman, 1990). Cromwell, it must be noted, was also motivated by a profound religious conviction that Washington did not share. 2. Mason L. Weems, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1918), p. 164. Both Washington’s contemporaries and later writers often grouped Cromwell and Julius Caesar together as examples of usurpers, as Weems did. The influence of Caesar’s example on the American revolutionaries was considerable, especially among those who had been educated in the classics. However, the example of Cromwell must have resonated more strongly among the majority of Americans. Unlike Caesar, who represented a different people and a distant past, Cromwell was English and had ruled within the lifetime of many revolutionaries’ grandparents and greatgrandparents, which gave his legacy an immediacy that Caesar’s lacked. 3. Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997), p. 293. 4. Alfred F. Young, “English Plebeian Culture and Eighteenth-Century American Radicalism,” in eds. Margaret Jacob and James Jacob, The Origins of AngloAmerican Radicalism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 185–206, esp. pp. 194–200. 5. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 1, 1742. 6. Washington’s book inventories for 1761 and c. 1764, in W. W. Abbot, ed., Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), Vol. 6, p. 286; Vol. 7, p. 345. 7. Thomas Jefferson stated that Washington’s reading was limited to “agriculture and English history”; Jefferson to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814, in Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Random House, 1944), p. 174. Washington’s interest in military leaders and his use of the library are described in Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 60, 120. 8. Clarendon’s volumes are in the same inventories described in Note 4, 6:215 and 7:344. For his assessment of Cromwell, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, “A Brave Bad Man,” in ed. Richard E. Boyer, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt: Failure of a Man or a Faith? (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1966), pp. 16, 19. 9. Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (New York: Mentor Books, 1960), p. 71. 10. Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: The Free Press, 1987), p. 26.

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

205

11. Diary entries of February 22, 1756; January 2, 1761; September 10, 1761, in ed. L. H. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1961), Vol. 1, pp. 9, 187, 220. 12. John Adams to Abigail Adams, addendum of June 17, 1775 to Letter dated June 11, 1775, in ed. L. H. Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963), Vol. 1, p. 215. 13. John Adams, Autobiography, in Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, Vol. 3, p. 323. 14. “Commission from the Continental Congress,” June 19, 1775, in ed. W. W. Abbot, Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), Vol. 1, pp. 6–7; “Instructions from the Continental Congress,” June 22, 1775, Ibid., pp. 21–22. 15. “Address from the New York Provincial Congress,” June 26, 1775, in Abbot, Papers of GW, Rev. War Series, Vol. 1, p. 40. The address and Washington’s reply were published in several colonial newspapers, including Rivington’s NewYork Gazette, June 29, 1775, p. 3, and Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, July 15, 1775, p. 3. 16. “Address to the New York Provincial Congress,” June 26, 1775, in Abbot, Papers of GW, Rev. War Series, Vol. 1, p. 41. 17. “Address from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress,” July 3, 1775, and “Address to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress,” c. July 4, 1775, in Abbot, Papers of GW, Rev. War Series, Vol. 1, pp. 52–53, 59–60. This exchange was also printed in other colonies, e.g., Rivington’s New-York Gazette, July 21, 1775, p. 2. 18. Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 1985), p. 102; Cunliffe, George Washington, p. 84. 19. Rivington’s New-York Gazette, October 26, 1775, p. 3. Emphasis in original. 20. Pennsylvania Gazette, February 28, 1776; April 24, 1776; Royal Gazette, New York, September 19, 1778. 21. Rivington’s New-York Gazette, October 25, 1777; Royal Gazette (New York), October 24, 1778; emphasis in both originals. 22. Royal Gazette (New York), January 2, 1779; January 23, 1779, emphasis in original; November 6, 1779. 23. Royal Gazette (New York), October 31, 1778; December 5, 1778. References to Washington as “Mister” rather than General can be found throughout the Royal Gazette, e.g., May 30, 1775; November 8, 22, and 27, 1777: May 27, 1778. Washington was offended by his enemies’ refusal to address him as “general” and in July 1776 would not accept a letter from General Howe because it was addressed to “George Washington, Esq.” Congress supported his action. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), Vol. 3, pp. 59–60. 24. David Freeman Hawke, Benjamin Rush, Revolutionary Gadfly (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), pp. 135–136, 176, 217; emphasis in both originals. In 1776 some Revolutionary leaders, including James Wilson and Samuel Adams, had worried that a national army might become the means for a Cromwellian seizure of power, but they apparently did not see Washington assuming Cromwell’s role, James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military

206

George Washington

Origins of the Republic, 1763–1789 (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1982), pp. 74–75. 25. Quoted in Schwartz, Making of an American Symbol, p. 22. 26. John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 6, 1777; John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 26, 1777, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, Vol. 2, pp. 200, 361. 27. Essay entitled “Honour, I Obey Thee,” in Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette, January 24, 1777. 28. Quoted in Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and the American Character, 1775–1783 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 261. 29. Hawke, Benjamin Rush, p. 231. 30. Royster, Revolutionary People at War, pp. 261–262. Sullivan was probably referring to the criticisms of Rush, Adams, and their supporters. 31. Richard Henry Lee to the Virginia Delegates in Congress, June 12, 1781, in ed. Julian P. Boyd, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–1982), Vol. 6, pp. 90–92. 32. Royster, Revolutionary People at War, pp. 335–336; Michael de la Bedoyere, George Washington: An English Judgment (London: George G. Harrap, 1935), pp. 213–214. 33. Royster, Revolutionary People at War, pp. 336–337. 34. A good account of Washington’s resignation, and the text of Washington’s Address to Congress, December 23, 1783, are in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6, pp. 402–413. 35. William Gordon to George Washington, June 19, 1783, in eds. John P. Kaminski and Jill Adair McCaughan, A Great and Good Man: George Washington in the Eyes of His Contemporaries (Madison, Wis.: Madison House Publishers, 1989), p. 17; Samuel Adams and Tristram Dalton to Washington, July 10, 1783, ibid., pp. 22–23; “Cincinnatus,” ibid., pp. 30, 32. Other references to Washington as Cincinnatus appeared in two poems composed by Massachusetts writers to commemorate Washington’s birthday in 1790, in Kaminski and McCaughan, Great and Good Man, pp. 41, 43; and the widely reprinted “Ode to the President—by a Lady” of 1789, ibid., pp. 163–165. See also Schwartz, Making of an American Symbol, p. 137; and Cunliffe, Man and Monument, pp. 23–24, 114–115, 162. 36. Quoted in John Corbin, The Unknown Washington: Biographic Origins of the Republic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), p. 256. 37. Randall, Washington: A Life, p. 402. 38. Jefferson to Jones, January 2, 1814, in Koch and Peden, Selected Writings of Jefferson, pp. 174–175; Jefferson to Samuel Adams, February 26, 1800, ibid., p. 557. 39. John Adams to John Jebb, September 10, 1785, in Adams, Works of John Adams, Vol. 9, p. 541. 40. Letter from John Henry, October 25, 1786, and Washington’s reply in eds. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, vol. 4, pp. 304–305. The editors are uncertain of the identity of the sender, but doubt that it was Patrick Henry’s son or the Maryland congressman of the same name.

Washington and the Specter of Cromwell

207

41. Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), pp. 192–193. 42. “The American Fabius Arrives,” in Kaminski and McCaughan, A Great and Good Man, p. 81. 43. “Brutus” X, in ed. Bernard Bailyn, The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle over Ratification (New York: Library of America, 1993), Vol. 2, pp. 86–87. 44. James Tagg, Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), p. 279; Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 153.

12 “A Compleat Gentleman”: Congress’s “Partiallity” for George Washington in 1775 William Guthrie Sayen

On 15 June 1775, the Second Continental Congress elected George Washington commander of the Revolutionary army. Washington attributed his election to “the partiallity of the Congress . . . , assisted by a political motive.”1 The standard scholarly explanation of Washington’s election ignores “the partiallity of the Congress” and focuses on the “political motive.”2 Washington had military experience, was a native-born American, and came from the southern province of Virginia, the oldest, largest, and wealthiest of the thirteen resisting colonies. Putting a southerner, especially a Virginian, at the head of an army then composed of New Englanders was crucial to transforming a regional into a continental cause. Certainly, the political expediency of binding the southern to the northern colonies explains in part Washington’s election, but his allusion to “the partiallity of the Congress”—an expression he used in four different letters—suggests that his appeal also transcended the concern for regional alliance.3 One biographer argues that Congress’s partiality was grounded in ideology. Washington appeared to embody the selfless patriotism celebrated by Country Party writers admired by American leaders.4 But the laudatory language the delegates and others used to describe Washington in 1774 and 1775 drew on a larger and more complex system of values than Country Party ideology. Throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world of the eighteenth century, the gentry, regardless of political persuasion, cultivated a style and set of values

210

George Washington

that distinguished gentlemen from commoners. The gentry ethos, or gentility, derived from a me´lange of classical, chivalric, and humanist ideas codified in Renaissance Italy in such treatises as Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528). Translations spread the ideal of courtly conduct first to France, then to England, and ultimately to British America. By the mid-eighteenth century, the gentry throughout the British Atlantic had embraced the genteel ethos.5 Gentility generally celebrated such qualities as birth, wealth, generosity, modesty, and honor. The ethos, however, may be subdivided into four overlapping types: court, martial, enlightened, and virtuous gentility. The court gentleman was distinguished by his refinement in manners and taste and by his complaisance, that is, his ability to make himself agreeable to others, whether at court or in a provincial drawing room. Court gentility was codified in the myriad courtesy books that flooded Britain and America during the eighteenth century; indeed, court gentility may be summed up by the word “courtesy,” a derivative of the word “court.”6 The martial gentleman was admired for a handsome appearance and skill in hunting, swimming, horsemanship, and other athletic endeavors, but was especially honored for his patriotism and courage in battle. The enlightened gentleman, like his humanist predecessor, was identified by his education, learning, wit, cosmopolitan views, and devotion to social progress. Though self-educated, Benjamin Franklin was the preeminent American example of enlightened gentility in 1775.7 The virtuous gentleman served the public without regard to private interest and was benevolent and honest in his dealings with all levels of society. Squire Allworthy in Henry Fielding’s comic masterpiece, Tom Jones (1749), exemplifies virtuous gentility. No one person embodied all facets of gentility; few even personified one of the four types. Yet the delegates to the Continental Congress cited salient features of each type to characterize Washington. “He is,” summarized one, “a compleat gentleman.”8 That phrase is the key to unlocking “the partiallity of the Congress.” Washington was born into a middling-gentry family on the British periphery, lost his father at age eleven, and received an abbreviated formal education—not an especially auspicious beginning. From youth, however, he worked to embody or appear to embody the whole range of gentry values. About the age of twelve, he transcribed the 110 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation,” which codified court gentility, or the art of making oneself agreeable to others.9 The rules instructed him in the manners, composure, discretion, modesty, and knowledge of place that were essential for a fatherless young man making his way in a hierarchical world. His courtesy and his poise helped him attract the attention of several powerful patrons, who advanced him quickly through a succession of prestigious colonial offices. His friend George Mercer said of Washington at age twenty-seven, “In conversation he looks you

“A Compleat Gentleman”

211

full in the face, is deliberate, deferential and engaging. His demeanor [is] at all times composed and dignified.”10 Thus as a young man he had mastered court gentility.11 Nature, moreover, endowed Washington with exceptional height, strength, and athleticism, and he refined these assets by “performing the military exercises” and taking lessons in dancing and fencing.12 “His movements and gestures,” said Mercer, “are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.” Mercer also noted his “penetrating eyes,” said to identify a hero.13 Washington thus possessed the outward attributes of the ideal warrior gentleman, and in battle he proved he had the inner attributes as well, most famously at Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat near the forks of the Ohio during the French and Indian War. While trying to rally British troops, Washington “had 4 Bullets through [his] Coat, and two Horses shot” from under him.14 Despite the humiliation of British arms, Washington emerged as a transcolonial hero, praised by pulpit and press.15 During his youth and early manhood, Washington also laid the basis for enlightened gentility. He gave himself a practical, if not a liberal, education. He learned to write clearly and cogently, practiced surveying, studied navigation, and schooled himself in military leadership. He traveled widely, sailing to and from Barbados, trekking nearly to Lake Erie, touring Virginia’s back settlements, exploring almost 300 miles down the Ohio River, and visiting every major city between North Carolina and New Hampshire. In each place he socialized with the leading men. So, when he attended the First Continental Congress in 1774, he was one of the most-traveled and best-connected men in British America. His business ventures further enlarged his knowledge of the wider world. He engaged in agriculture, industry, commerce, and land development—all on an ambitious scale. He raised tobacco and wheat for cash, manufactured flour, developed the Potomac fishery, traded his products on the international market, and speculated aggressively in western lands. He kept abreast of the most advanced ideas on agriculture and experimented constantly in an effort to improve the quality and the yields of his crops and raise the productivity of his labor force. And he led the effort to link the transmontane west to the Atlantic trading network. He thought in terms of empire. Though not a philosophe, he was by colonial standards cosmopolitan and enlightened.16 Washington’s business enterprises and an advantageous marriage provided him with the ultimate foundation of gentility—wealth. And he led a life characteristic of his economic status. He renovated and enlarged the mansion house at Mount Vernon, stocked it with imported furnishings, beautified the grounds, and prided himself on his hospitality. Between 1768 and 1775 he received some 2,000 guests.17 He led a life of supercharged sociability, dining with friends, playing at cards, dancing at balls, attending the theater, and hunting fox. He enjoyed people, and people enjoyed him.

212

George Washington

His amiability, the very heart of court gentility, flourished in this environment.18 In the years following his service in the French and Indian War, Washington learned to reconcile the contradictory demands of self-assertion and courtesy—something that had eluded him in his first military career, when his headlong pursuit of honor caused him to ignore the very “Rules of Civility” that had assisted his rise.19 After the war, he served at every level of colonial government, engaged in multiple acts of philanthropy, promoted education and knowledge, and accepted time-consuming fiduciary obligations on behalf of family, friends, and neighbors. Increasingly he came to exemplify virtuous gentility, and, like Squire Allworthy, he did it without affectation. As the crisis in relations between the colonies and the mother country deepened, so did Washington’s efforts in resisting parliamentary assertions of authority. The leaders of Virginia twice sent him to the Continental Congresses in Philadelphia. By the time the delegates elected him commander of the American army, many of them had spent three intensive months with him. He had been present for the entire life of the First Continental Congress, held in September and October 1774, and from the opening of the Second, in May 1775.20 He had worked intimately with individual delegates on committees and had deliberated with all of them in plenary session, where he addressed his colleagues “in cool but determined Stile & Accent.”21 He had dined out daily, played cards, drunk tea, clubbed at taverns, attended two balls and an entertainment, visited the “New Prison” and the waxworks, made several short excursions, and gone to church—all in the company of other delegates.22 “The more I am acquainted with, the more I esteem him,” said Silas Deane of Connecticut.23 The men and women who met Washington in 1774 and 1775 were deeply impressed with him, and they described him in strikingly similar terms—terms, moreover, that emphasized the core characteristics of each of the four types of gentility. Samuel Curwen, a loyalist, depicted Washington as “a fine figure, and of a most easy and agreeable address.”24 John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and Thomas Cushing, all delegates from Massachusetts, characterized him as “amiable”—a word Adams returned to repeatedly.25 Amiability was the heart of the “easy and agreeable address” celebrated by court gentility. Washington’s war record and martial bearing also impressed his contemporaries. “Colonel Washington is,” said Deane, “nearly as Tall a Man as Col. Fitch and almost as hard a Countenance, yet with a very young Look, & an easy Soldierlike Air, & gesture.” Deane also recalled that Washington “was with Braddock, & was the means of saving the remains of that unfortunate Army.”26 Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia said, “He has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king

“A Compleat Gentleman”

213

in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre at his side.”27 Adams, Deane, and Cushing all referred to his “bravery” or called him “brave”—the core characteristic of martial gentility.28 Delegates further ascribed to Washington a catalog of enlightened virtues. He was a man of “superior” abilities, who was “Accomplished,” “Clever,” “Sage,” “sinsible,” “judicious and cool.”29 “He seems discre[e]t & Virtuous,” said Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut, “no harum Starum ranting fellow but Sober, steady, & calm.”30 Delegates were much impressed by reports of his wealth, which they linked to his virtue. An apocryphal story circulated in Philadelphia that he had announced to the Virginia Assembly, “I will raise 1000 Men, subsist them at my own Expence and march my self at their Head for the Relief of Boston.”31 And, it was added, “His Fortune is said to be equall to such an undertaking.”32 Washington’s readiness to serve the cause without salary established his virtue and excited the deepest admiration. “There is something charming to me in the conduct of Washington,” exclaimed John Adams. “A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, hazarding all in the cause of his country! His views are noble and disinterested. He declared, when he accepted the mighty trust, that he would lay before us an exact account of his expenses, and not accept a shilling for pay.”33 Such liberality was the epitome of virtuous gentility. More than a few gentlemen in British America had greater claims to virtue or to enlightenment or to courtesy or even to military experience, if the pool were enlarged to include English-born veterans, such as Charles Lee. But none combined the salient features of all four genteel types so fully and so harmoniously as did Washington. “You had prepaired me to entertain a favorable opinion of him,” Abigail Adams told her husband, “but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agre[e]ably blended in him.”34 As Mrs. Adams implied, it was the blending of several qualities that made him so compelling. He was more than the sum of his parts. “He is a compleat gentleman,” said Cushing. “He is sinsible, amiable, virtuous, modest, and brave.”35 Cushing thus ascribed to Washington the cardinal quality of each of the four genteel types. Washington’s good sense marked him as an enlightened gentleman: intelligent, reasonable, judicious, broad-minded. His amiability showed him to be a court gentleman, whose social address and deferential manners made him agreeable to all. His virtue identified him as a gentleman who was willing to sacrifice private interest for public good. His bravery revealed him a warrior, which is what the leaders of the American resistance movement needed in June 1775. And his modesty, as another delegate noted, made those other virtues “shine proportionably brighter.”36

214

George Washington

Washington’s appeal, like the gentry ethos, crossed regional lines. Though a Virginian backed by southerners for the position of commander, he impressed northerners.37 “We Esteem him well Adapted to please A New England Army,” said Dyer of Connecticut, “and much better Suited to the Temper & Genius of our People than any other Gent[leman] not brought up in that Part of the Country.”38 Cushing of Massachusetts agreed, “I doubt not his agre[e]able behavior & good conduct will give great satisfaction to our People of all denominations.”39 It was Washington’s “compleat” gentility that accounts for “the partiallity of the Congress.” He was charming and competent. He was politically astute as well as being a political choice. He appeared to represent the best of the colonial gentry. His class virtues made him a fitting symbol of the American cause and a safe man on whom to confer dangerous amounts of power. His qualities as a gentleman, moreover, would help him as general and as president to inspire the common people and to manage the gentry. NOTES 1. George Washington (hereafter GW) to the Officers of the Five Virginia Independent Companies, 20 June 1775, The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series, ed. W. W. Abbot et al., 7 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985– ), Vol. 1, p. 17 (hereafter cited as PGW Rev). 2. The most important book-length treatments of GW’s career published since World War II that include discussions of his selection as commander of the Continental Army are Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, 7 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1948–1957), Vol. 3, pp. 432–437; Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), pp. 76– 79; Bernhard Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1775 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964), pp. 114–116; James Thomas Flexner, George Washington, 4 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965–1972), Vol. 2, pp. 12– 14; John R. Alden, George Washington: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), pp. 109–113; Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 16–17; John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), pp. 112–13; Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 160– 183; Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York: Free Press, 1996), pp. 20–24. Only Cunliffe, Flexner, and Longmore give more than passing consideration to the personal aspects of GW’s appeal to Congress, and only Longmore fully analyzes Congress’s enthusiasm for GW as a person, but his interpretation falls fully within the republican paradigm. Don Higginbotham highlights the “political dimensions” (p. 43) of GW’s appointment with emphasis on his experience as a legislator (George Washington and the American Military Tradition [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985], pp. 42–44). 3. GW to Burwell Bassett, 19 June 1775, PGW Rev Vol. 1, p. 13; GW to John Parke Custis, 19 June 1775, PGW Rev Vol. 1, p. 15; GW to the Officers of the

“A Compleat Gentleman”

215

Five Virginia Independent Companies, 20 June 1775, PGW Rev Vol. 1, p. 17; GW to John Augustine Washington, 20 June 1775, PGW Rev Vol. 1, p. 19. 4. Longmore, Invention of GW, chap. 14. 5. For qualities of a courtier, see Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby, Everyman’s Library (1561; London: Dent, 1994), esp. bk. 1; on the influence of Castiglione’s book, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Knopf, 1992), pp. 33–35; on diffusion of gentility, see ibid., pp. xii, 402. 6. What is here called court gentility is explored by Bushman, Refinement of America, chaps. 1–6. 7. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 189–205. 8. Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Paul H. Smith et al., 19 vols. to date (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976– ), Vol. 1, p. 530 (hereafter cited as LDC). 9. “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation” was found among papers believed to have been composed by George Washington between ten and thirteen years of age (The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series, ed. W. W. Abbott et al., 10 vols. [Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–1995], Vol. 1, p. 1 [hereafter cited as PGW Col]). At the on-line site for The Papers of George Washington, the editors date the “Rules” ca. 1744, when GW was twelve (“School Exercises: Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation,” The Papers of George Washington; available from http:// www.minerva.acc.Virginia.EDU/~gwpapers; Internet; accessed 10 September 1997). Charles Moore suggests GW copied the rules at age fifteen (Moore, ed., George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation [Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1926], p. vii). Transcriptions of various rules will follow those posted on-line by PGW. 10. Quoted in Freeman, GW: Biography, Vol. 3, p. 6. Though the description of GW attributed to Mercer is of uncertain provenance and almost certainly errs in regard to GW’s height, it agrees in every comparable respect with Charles Willson Peale’s 1772 portrait, which was painted from life, and it agrees with the intangible assessments made by people who knew GW later. I have, therefore, provisionally accepted the description as authentic, though, as Freeman says, it may have been “touched up” (Vol. 3, p. 6, note 10). 11. For a complete discussion of GW’s assimilation of court gentility, 1732– 1755, see William Guthrie Sayen, “ ‘A Compleat Gentleman’: The Making of George Washington, 1732–1775” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1998), chap. 1. 12. For “military exercises,” see Rosemarie Zagarri, ed., David Humphreys’ “Life of George Washington” with George Washington’s “Remarks” (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), p. 7. On dancing, see ibid.; and Freeman, GW: Biography, Vol. 1, p. 229. On fencing, see Zagarri, Humphreys’ “Life,” p. 7; and Freeman, GW: Biography, Vol. 2, p. 204. 13. Quoted in Freeman, GW: Biography, Vol. 3, p. 6. On the significance of eyes, see Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 48.

216

George Washington

14. GW to John Augustine Washington, 18 July 1755, PGW Col, Vol. 1, p. 343. 15. Samuel Davies, Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a Good Soldier (Philadelphia: N.P., 1755), pp. 8–9; Boston Gazette, or Country Journal, 11–25 August 1755, 1–22 March 1756. 16. For a full discussion of GW’s enlightened gentility, see Sayen, “ ‘Compleat Gentleman,’ ” chap. 5. 17. Cunliffe, GW: Man and Monument, p. 66. 18. For a full discussion of GW’s life of refinement, recreation, hospitality, and amiability between the French and Indian War and the Revolution, see Sayen, “ ‘Compleat Gentleman,’ ” chap. 4. 19. William Guthrie Sayen, “George Washington’s ‘Unmannerly’ Behavior: The Clash between Civility and Honor,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 107 (1999), pp. 5–36; Sayen, “ ‘Compleat Gentleman,’ ” chap. 5. 20. The Diaries of George Washington, ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1976–1979), Vol. 3, pp. 274– 287, 328–336 (hereafter cited as DGW). 21. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 10–11 September 1774, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 62. 22. For most activities, see Diaries, Vol. 3, pp. 274–287, 329–336; for prison and waxworks, see Cash Accounts, September 1774, PGW Col, Vol. 10, p. 160, note 6; for cards, see Cash Accounts, October 1774, PGW Col, Vol. 10, p. 166. 23. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 16 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 494. 24. Quoted in DGW, Vol. 3, p. 329. 25. John Adams to Abigail Adams, 17 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 497; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 18 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 502; John Adams to James Warren, 20 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 518; Robert Treat Paine to Artemas Ward, 18 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 509; Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 530. 26. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 10–11 September 1774, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 61. 27. Benjamin Rush to Thomas Rushton, 29 October 1775, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), Vol. 1, p. 92. 28. John Adams to Abigail Adams, 17 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 497; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 18 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 502; John Adams to James Warren, 20 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 518; Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 16 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 494; Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 530. 29. Virginia Delegate to Unknown, 14 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 486 (“superior”); John Adams to Mercy Warren, 25 November 1775, LDC, Vol. 2, p. 387 (“Accomplished,” “judicious and cool”); Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, 17 June, 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 497 (“Clever”); John Adams to James Warren, 20 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 518 (“Sage”); Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 530 (“sinsible”). 30. Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, 17 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, pp. 499– 500. 31. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield et al., 4 vols., The Adams Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: 1961–1964), Vol. 2, pp. 114–24, quoted in LDC, Vol. 1, p. 5 (quotation), note on p. 12; Silas Deane to Elizabeth

“A Compleat Gentleman”

217

Deane, 10–11 September 1774, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 62; Thomas Lynch to Ralph Izard, 26 October 1774, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 247. 32. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 10–11 September 1774, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 62. 33. John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 18 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 504. 34. Abigail Adams to John Adams, 16 July 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 6 vols. to date, The Adams Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1963– ), Vol. 1, p. 246. Of Charles Lee, Mrs. Adams quipped, “The elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person” (p. 247). 35. Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 530. 36. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 16 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 494. 37. On southern backing, see Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. 3, p. 321. 38. Eliphalet Dyer to Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., 16 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, pp. 495–496. 39. Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin, Sr., 21 June 1775, LDC, Vol. 1, p. 530.

13 George Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and the Legitimacy of Revolution Ricardo A. Herrera

On 19 August 1775, George Washington wrote for the second time during the Siege of Boston to his opponent, Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage, protesting British treatment of American prisoners. Washington’s purpose was to get Gage’s agreement to treat captured Revolutionaries as legitimate soldiers and not as rebels and, thereby, to insure their safety and well-being. Although Washington’s immediate motive for the letter was the issue of prisoner status and treatment, these concerns, upon close reflection, were secondary to the much larger issue of popular sovereignty as the source of legitimacy for the American Revolution. The letter is an entre´e into an exploration of Washington’s constitutional thought at the outbreak of the War of American Independence, the possible background and development of that thought, and how popular sovereignty legitimized the Revolution. Admittedly, this venture is highly speculative; Washington, unlike many other Founding Fathers, did not leave a well-developed or contemplative record tracing the development of his beliefs. Indeed, in his letters and in public he rarely addressed such speculative issues. Thus, because of his reserved nature, Washington has been better known as a highly practical man, albeit one with a profound understanding of power who was not among the leading intellectual lights of the Revolutionary era. While this examination is not intended to place Washington in the forefront of the ideological movement, it will demonstrate that he understood and accepted one of the most forward-thinking and radical

220

George Washington

propositions of the Revolution, that of popular sovereignty. Before looking at it, however, it is important first to understand its immediate background.1 Eight days earlier Washington had first expressed his concerns over British mistreatment of American prisoners. He took time to remind the British commander that the Revolutionary “Officers” were not lawless bandits, but were, instead, highly principled men “engaged in the Cause of Liberty and their Country” and who were, therefore, fully deserving of “more tender Treatment.” Despite this small detour into the Revolutionary character and ethos, Washington wished to keep the matter focused on the issue at hand and did not wish to enter into a lengthy argument over the justness of the American cause or its ideology. Although Washington tried to let the politics and motivation of the struggle rest by letting Gage’s “Opinion, Sir, of the Principle which Actuates them, be what it may,” he could not resist letting Gage know that the Revolutionaries “suppose they act from the noblest of all Principles, a Love of Freedom, and their Country.”2 Responding on 13 August, Gage protested to Washington his “Compassion to the subdued” even though they were “Prisoners, whose Lives by the Laws of the Land are destined to the Cord” of the gallows. Reversing their roles, Gage accused Washington and the Revolutionaries of abusing British prisoners and Loyalists who were in their care. Gage went on and announced that he would “Acknowledge no Rank that is not derived from the King.” In Gage’s eyes Washington’s men and their standing as rightful soldiers deserving of proper consideration was a fiction. Furthermore, Gage, as if to remind the upstart Washington of their relative places in the hierarchy of military affairs, deemed that Washington and the Continental Army existed under the auspices of “usurped Authority.” As far as Thomas Gage was concerned, everything in this matter hinged upon the issue of legitimacy and its conferring power. And at the heart of the whole matter of legitimacy was sovereignty, the primary and indivisible source of national power. In England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had settled the issue of Parliamentary versus royal sovereignty in favor of Parliament when it had dismissed one king and had invited another to assume the throne. In an age of monarchs, however, the concept of the king-in-Parliament and the imprimatur of royal approval gave a veneer of legitimacy to the acts of an otherwise sovereign Parliament. As far as Gage was concerned, no enterprise had legal or moral standing without the monarch’s blessing. Needless to say, Gage’s reply failed to appease Washington.3 Washington responded to Gage’s rejoinder with what Paul K. Longmore has termed a “double-barreled blast which is a small classic of political propaganda” and a “succinct Whig-republican statement” of revolutionary purpose. Offended by Gage’s arrogance, Washington let fly with a wonderfully crafted riposte of measured anger and political wisdom that not

Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and Legitimacy of Revolution

221

only rebuked Gage, but, more importantly, went straight to the heart of American Revolutionary and constitutional ideology.4 On 19 August, Washington wrote to Gage and informed him:

I address’d you on the 11th Instant in Terms which gave the fairest Scope, for the Exercise of that Humanity and Politeness, which were supposed to form a Part of your Character—I remonstrated with you, on the unworthy Treatment shewn to the Officers, and Citizens of America, whom the Fortune of War, Chance, or a mistaken Confidence had thrown into your Hands. Whether British, or American Mercy, Fortitude, and Patience are most preeminent; whether our virtuous Citizens whom the Hand of Tyranny has forced into Arms, to defend their Wives, their Children, and their Property; or the mercenary Instruments of lawless Domination, Avarice, and Revenge best deserve the Appellation of Rebels, and the Punishment of that Cord, which your affected Clemency has forborne to inflict; Whether the Authority under which I act is usurp’d, or founded on the genuine Principles of Liberty, were altogether foreign to my Subject. I purposely avoided all political Disquisition; nor shall I now avail myself of those Advantages, which the sacred Cause of my Country, of Liberty, and human Nature give me over you. Much less shall I stoop to Retort, and Invective. But the Intelligence, you say, you have received from our Army requires a Reply. I have taken Time, Sir, to make a strict Inquiry, and find it has not the least Foundation in Truth. Not only your Officers, and Soldiers have been treated with a tenderness due to Fellow Citizens, and Brethren; but even those execrable Parricides, whose Counsels and Aid have deluged their Country with Blood, have been protected from the Fury of a justly enraged People. Far from compelling, or even permitting their Assistance, I am embarrassed with the Numbers who crowd to our Camp, animated with the purest Principles of Virtue, and Love of their Country. You advise me to give free Operation to Truth, to punish Misrepresentation and Falshood. If Experience stamps Value upon Counsel, yours must have a Weight which few can claim. You best can tell, how far the Convulsion which has brought such Ruin on both Countries, and shaken the mighty Empire of Britain to its Foundation, may be traced to those malignant Causes. You affect, Sir, to despise all Rank not derived from the same Source with your own. I cannot conceive any more honourable, than that which flows from the uncorrupted Choice of a brave and free People—The purest Source and original Fountain of all Power. Far from making it a Plea for Cruelty, a Mind of true Magnanimity, & enlarged Ideas would comprehend and respect it. What may have been the ministerial Views which precipitated the present Crisis, Lexington, Concord, and Charlestown can best declare—May that God to whom you then appealed, judge between American and you! Under his Providence, those who influence the Councils of America, and all other Inhabitants of these united Colonies, at the Hazard of their Lives, are resolved to hand down to Posterity those just and invaluable Privileges which they received from their Ancestors. I shall now, Sir, close my Correspondence with you, perhaps forever. If your Officers who are our prisoners receive a Treatment from me, different from what I wish’d to shew them, they, and you, will remember the Occasion of it.5

222

George Washington

Surprisingly, most historians have either ignored or glossed over the 19 August letter by limiting their assessments of it to something in the vein of Henry Cabot Lodge’s 1889 opinion of it as one in a series of “keen reproofs” to British arrogance that was done out of a sense duty to a “great and righteous cause,” or as Rupert Hughes wrote in 1927, a “majestic answer to Gage’s refusal to recognize any authority except the King’s.” Biographers John Corbin, in The Unknown Washington: Biographic Origins of the Republic, and Bernard Fay¨, in George Washington: Republican Aristocrat, rather facilely concluded that Washington’s belief in popular sovereignty dated only to the 1787 ratification debates in Virginia and that it was his “long association with the Yankee revolutionaries” that taught him about the “real character of the Revolution.” Of all the Washington biographers only Washington Irving and Paul K. Longmore have given this letter anything approaching the attention it deserves.6 Irving, in his Life of George Washington, commented that this correspondence with Gage was “intended to put the hostile services on a proper footing” by taking this “early opportunity to let him [Gage] know, that he [Washington] claimed to be the commander of a legitimate force, engaged in a legitimate cause, and that he and his army were to be treated on a footing of perfect equality.” Indeed, Irving considered it to be Washington’s “manifesto as commander-in-chief of the armies of the Revolution; setting forth the opinions and motives by which he was governed, and the principles on which hostilities would be conducted.” Similarly, Paul K. Longmore, in The Invention of George Washington, deemed the letter to be an important work of Revolutionary purpose and propaganda. While both Irving and Longmore were correct, neither of their analyses explores satisfactorily Washington’s understanding of popular sovereignty.7 When Washington wrote to Gage, he reminded the Briton that in his previous letter he had “purposely avoided all political Disquisition” because the issue of whether the “Authority under which” Washington (and by extension all Revolutionaries) acted was “usurp’d, or founded on the genuine Principles of Liberty” and, besides, they were “altogether foreign” to the matter of American prisoners. Even at this moment, Washington, rather disingenuously, refused to “avail myself of those Advantages, which the sacred Cause of my Country of Liberty, and human Nature, give me over you: Much less shall I stoop to Retort and Invective.” However, the time for following the strictly delimited courtesies of military professionalism had passed; Thomas Gage needed a blunt and concise lesson in what Washington believed was the core ideology of American republicanism. “You affect, Sir,” stated Washington, “to despise all Rank, not derived from the same Source with your own.” However, he wrote, “I cannot conceive one more honourable, than that which flows from the uncorrupted Choice of a brave and Free People,” who were the “purest Source and original Fountain of all Power.” Indeed, if Gage were possessed of a “mind

Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and Legitimacy of Revolution

223

of true Magnanimity, and enlarged Ideas” then surely, he “would comprehend, and respect it.”8 Few of Washington’s many letters expressed so eloquently his belief in and understanding of the popular and, therefore, democratic basis of sovereignty. While the word “sovereignty” does not appear in the text, it is patently clear that Washington had the concept in mind. He all but defined popular sovereignty when he wrote of the “brave and free People” of America as the “purest Source and original Fountain of all Power.” Clearly, as Gordon S. Wood has shown of other American leaders, he had embraced an “entirely new conception of politics,” indeed, “one that was recognizably modern,” one that demanded a due respect for the rights, opinions, and will of the people from those who would lead them. It is difficult to imagine Washington as a democrat, but when one considers that he subscribed to the Lockean concept of a republican society founded upon the mutually agreeable interests of its members and that public leadership depended upon the approval of the people, one is left with no other conclusion than that he believed in sovereignty’s democratic foundation.9 In spite of his radicalism, Washington believed that the people’s interests were best served in a representative government comprised of society’s better men. But even in this case, Washington signaled that individual Americans constituted the bedrock of national power and legitimacy in the Revolutionary republic and that they alone were the sole source of that power. Nonetheless, at this early stage of the Revolution, Washington, like other Revolutionaries, had trouble defining just who were the people, the “undisputed, ubiquitous source that was appealed to by both the advocates and opponents of independence.” As Washington matured and his political philosophy deepened, he, along with others, came to understand that the people were the free whole of American society. Notwithstanding this, let it suffice to say that Washington’s thought continued to evolve and mature throughout his life. However, that story is beyond the ken of this inquiry.10 From the moment that Washington accepted his commission as the commanding general of the Continental Army, he acknowledged the “unanimous Voice of the Colonies” assembled in Congress as the source of his appointment and as his superiors. During the first few days of his command he incorporated that soon-to-be stock phrase into his correspondence. Notwithstanding the slightly hackneyed sound of it, its words do indicate Washington’s sincere belief in the democratic basis of the Republic. He had no power except that which his fellow citizens had deigned to delegate to him through their representatives on their own behalf. Although Washington was socially superior to most Americans, his words point to his acceptance of a theoretical political equality among Americans. This is striking when one considers that previously the king or governor had been the source of high-ranking military commissions. While Washington had earlier stood for office in the House of Burgesses and was, therefore, responsible

224

George Washington

to the will of the electorate, he had never derived any of his commissions from the people or their representatives. They had always had their source in the governor. By tracing the source of his commission to the people Washington had, in effect, turned himself and the Continental Army into an instrument of the people’s will. Thus Washington and his Continentals embodied the power and will of the American people. Other armies were the instruments of monarchs, and not subject to any popular voice. But the Continental Army’s underlying premise of their existence and mission was radical—to serve the people at their pleasure. He and his Continentals were, therefore, the armed and legitimate agents of the popular sovereign will.11 Ultimately, the American Revolution was a struggle over sovereignty and its location. One of the Revolution’s major achievements was the radical reformulation of the source of sovereignty. The traditional view, as explained by Bernard Bailyn, held that “power in its legitimate form inhered naturally in government and was the possession and interest of those who controlled government.” According to this formula, sovereignty in the British empire rested in Parliament and was an indivisible and irresistible power that could not be abrogated, shared, or divided even had Parliament wished it. Sovereignty was the state’s “final power, higher in legal authority than any other power, subject to no law, a law unto itself.” Standing in stark opposition to this power was weak liberty, the province of the people, who had no power. Because liberty was weak, it could not defy sovereignty for any length of time. Its exercise and existence, therefore, were dependent on the government’s use of its power. Sovereignty, because it was the state’s highest power, determined the legitimacy of all acts within the state. In its purest sense, this represented a Hobbesian case of might making right. Most Parliamentarians might profess to being Whigs or even Real Whigs who acknowledged the individually contracted basis of society, but, nonetheless, they held to a view of Parliament’s supreme power. Thus however just a people’s claims to liberty might be, they were futile without sovereignty’s blessing. By all rights then, what Washington posited was truly revolutionary. He had not simply rebelled by denying parliamentary authority in the American colonies, but had gone beyond that limit by denying that sovereignty even resided in Parliament or in any government. It was, accordingly, the property of the individuals who had voluntarily formed society.12 In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn found that Americans did not openly speak of popular sovereignty until 1776. The authors of two Pennsylvania pamphlets—Four Letters on Important Subjects and The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon or English Constitution—held that the fundamental purpose of any constitution was to delineate and limit the powers of government. In order to insure that those limits were not transgressed, it was imperative that the consti-

Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and Legitimacy of Revolution

225

tution be “grounded in some fundamental source of authority,” namely, the people. This position, a “strange and awkward” one in the eighteenth century, took the Lockean social contract to its logical conclusion. If, in the mythic state of nature, men had voluntarily formed a society, then they alone held the power to determine the constitution of their society, they alone had sovereignty. Interestingly, it was in 1775 that George Washington had first recognized and enunciated his acceptance of the proposition that sovereignty emanated from the people.13 The development of Washington’s belief in popular sovereignty is difficult to trace. He left few records indicating what he read or of the ideas that he had garnered from his experience in public life. Still, it is possible to reconstruct something approximating the foundations of his thought. Most Washington historians have subscribed to the belief that Washington’s “judgment was both sound and sure,” albeit derived largely from practical experience and instinct. Nearly all have dismissed his reading as limited to agricultural tracts and miscellaneous other works of limited intellectual depth. The opinions of other historians, including Douglas Southall Freeman, John R. Alden, and John Ferling, have run the gamut from “an unimaginative man”; “we know that as a child Washington was exposed to Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, and that he was obsessed with his copy of the Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior”; “familiar with the plot of Cato”; and that there is “no evidence that he had yet read any of the popular ideological tracts spawned by the crisis,” although he might have been influenced by his colleagues.14 It is true that experience was an important factor in shaping Washington’s ideology, but it was not the only one. After scrutinizing the inventories of Washington’s library and his purchases for his stepson’s education, Paul K. Longmore has concluded that Washington was a remarkably wellinformed man whose reading interests went far beyond agricultural tracts. He was, however, an autodidact who did not have the benefit of a formal education. Well aware of his rudimentary schooling and extremely selfconscious, Washington was often unsure of the quality of his arguments and was, therefore, reticent about venturing his opinions publicly. In retrospect, Washington’s reluctance over risking public humiliation was not a cover for an ignorant or shallow man. He was, in fact, quite well read. Political pamphlets, particularly those by his colleagues in the Burgesses, Landon Carter and Richard Bland, were an “essential part of his reading.” As a teen, he read English history, and later had copies of The Spectator and The Guardian in his library. Upon marrying Martha Dandridge Custis, Washington added her inherited library from Daniel Parke Custis to his own. Some of the inherited volumes included The Tatler, The Free Thinker, The Freeholder, Trenchard and Gordon’s Independent Whig, “their enormously influential Cato’s Letters,” the fourteen-volume Craftsman by Bolingbroke, and Plutarch’s Lives. Washington may not have been a great

226

George Washington

“speculative thinker,” but he was far from being unlettered. His reading opened his mind to forward-thinking radical politics and it enabled him to understand its abstruse theory as it applied to the realities of the Revolution.15 It seems that by 1774, Washington’s thinking had begun moving toward a belief in a popular basis for political society. At an extralegal meeting of Virginia Burgesses at Williamsburg’s Raleigh Tavern, Washington wrote to his friend George William Fairfax that “Americans will never be tax’d without their own consent.” He was concerned that the “Minds of the People” had been “disturbed” by the “Invasion of our Rights and Priviledges by the Mother Country.” While he had not explicitly countenanced the doctrine of popular sovereignty, he clearly averred in favor of consensual and representative politics. A little more than a year later, on 18 July 1775, Washington appears to have fully recognized the nature of the Revolution, and that its ultimate success depended on the “Voluntary Choice of Freemen, contending in the great Cause of civil Liberty.” It was shortly after this letter that Washington penned what Irving so appropriately termed his “manifesto.”16 What Washington had posited was truly revolutionary. He was proposing that the people, the governed, were also the governors. Sovereignty had traditionally been the preserve of government. Government alone had been able to harness and exercise the political, financial, and military power of the state, and had often done so at the expense of the people’s liberty. But in this case, Washington, like some of the leading intellectual lights of the Revolution, had reversed the status quo and, according to the theory, had turned government into the handmaiden of the people. Liberty was still weak, but now it could not be threatened by sovereignty because they were both the province of the people. As Edmund S. Morgan wrote, popular sovereignty “affirm[ed] the power, the authority, and the rights of the people over their government, even while sustaining the power, authority, and prerogatives of the government by virtue of their authorization of it.” Washington the practical man was also Washington the radical. As Washington had indicated to Gage, power rightfully resided in a “brave and free People, the purest Source and original Fountain of all Power.”17 One of the American Revolution’s major achievements was the reformulation of the source and nature of sovereignty. American theoreticians completed a train of thought whose origins began with the English Commonwealth and John Locke. They took their republicanism seriously and literally when they posited that sovereignty resided in the people, that it was indivisible, and that it could not be surrendered legitimately by them to any power. Well before 1776, George Washington recognized that sovereignty emanated from the people and that it was their will that conferred legitimacy upon the American Revolution. He understood the import of

Washington, Popular Sovereignty, and Legitimacy of Revolution

227

popular sovereignty and believed that it conferred legitimacy upon the Revolution. NOTES 1. Glenn A. Phelps, George Washington and American Constitutionalism. Series: American Political Thought, ed. Wilson Carey McWilliams and Lance Banning (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), pp. vii–viii, 25. 2. George Washington to Thomas Gage, 11 August 1775, George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, Vol. 1, June–September 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), pp. 289–290. 3. Gage to Washington, Papers, 13 August 1775, Vol. 1, pp. 301–302; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enl. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1967; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1992), pp. 198, 201–204. 4. Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 189–190. 5. Washington to Gage, Papers, 19 August 1775, Vol. 1, pp. 326–327. 6. Henry Cabot Lodge, George Washington, 2nd ed. Series: Giants of America: The Founding Fathers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889; repr. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970), p. 148; Rupert Hughes, George Washington, Vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Morrow, 1927), p. 315; John Corbin, The Unknown Washington: Biographic Origins of the Republic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), pp. 24–25, 49; Bernard Fay¨, George Washington: Republican Aristocrat (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), pp. 166–167, 186, 234, 235. 7. Washington Irving, The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1857), p. 53; Longmore, Invention of Washington, pp. 189–190. John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, 2nd rev. & corr. ed., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. Crissy, 1831); John R. Alden, George Washington: A Biography, Southern Biography Series (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984); John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988); Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, Vol. 3, Planter and Patriot (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951); and James Thomas Flexner, George Washington in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967). 8. Washington to Gage, Papers, 19 August 1775, Vol. 1, pp. 326–327. 9. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1972), pp. viii, 330, 607. 10. Ibid. 11. Washington to Burwell Bassett, to John Parke Custis, to the Officers of Five Virginia Independent Companies, to John Augustine Washington, Papers, 19, 20 June 1775, Vol. 1, pp. 12, 15, 18, 19; Washington to Nicholas Cooke, 18 July 1775, Writings, Vol. 3, p. 128; Edmund S. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington, George Rogers Clark Lecture 5 (Washington, D.C.: Society of the Cincinnati, 1980), pp. 6, 12–13; Phelps, Constitutionalism of Washington, pp. 35–37.

228

George Washington

12. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 59, 198, 201–204. 13. Ibid., pp. 182–184, 198, 201–204. 14. Matthew Spalding and Patrick J. Garrity, A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 10; Freeman, Washington, p. 3: 369; Alden, Biography, pp. 4–5, 78; Ferling, First of Men, p. 92. 15. Longmore, Invention of Washington, pp. 56, 73, 119–120, 122, 169, 213– 226. 16. George Washington to George William Fairfax, to Nicholas Cooke, 10 June 1774, 18 July 1775, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 224–225, 344; Irving, Life of Washington, p. 53. 17. Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 38; Washington to Gage, 19 August 1775, Papers, Vol. 1, p. 327.

Selected Bibliography

Alden, John. George Washington: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Allen, William B., ed. George Washington: A Collection. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988. Ambrose, Stephen. Eisenhower. 2 volumes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Aristotle. The Ethics. trans. J. A. K. Thompson. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966. ———. The Politics. trans. Ernest Barker. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. Barber, James David. The Presidential Character. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1972. Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1973. Blum, John, Edmund Morgan, et al. The National Experience. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Brookhiser, Richard. Founding Father. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956. ———. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Canavan, Francis. The Political Ideas of Edmund Burke. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960. Commins, Saxe, ed. Basic Writings of George Washington. New York: Random House, 1948.

230

Selected Bibliography

Cook, Blanche. The Declassified Eisenhower. New York: Doubleday, 1981. Cunliffe, Marcus. George Washington: Man and Monument. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1958. Current, Richard, ed. The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Davies, James C. Human Nature in Politics. New York: John Wiley, 1963. Donald, David. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Eidelberg, Paul. A Discourse on Statesmanship: The Design and Transformation of the American Polity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974. Ferling, John. The First of Men: A Life of George Washington. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. Fishman, Ethan. The Prudential Presidency. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001. Fitzpatrick, John C., ed. The Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–1944. Flexner, Thomas. Washington: The Indispensable Man. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974. Freeman, Douglas S. George Washington: A Biography, completed by John Carroll and Mary Ashworth, 7 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948– 1957. Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1990. Gibbons, Herbert Adams. America’s Place in the World. New York: The Century Co., 1924. Gilbert, Felix. The Beginnings of American Foreign Policy: To the Farewell Address. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1961. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Greenstein, Fred. The Hidden Hand Presidency. New York: Basic Books, 1982. Gregg, Gary, II, and Matthew Spalding, eds. Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Press, 1999. Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter. New York: New American Library, 1961. Higginbotham, Don. George Washington and the American Military Tradition. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York: Vintage Books, 1961. Jackson, Donald, and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Diaries of George Washington, 6 vols. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976–1979. Jaffa, Harry. Crisis of the House Divided. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Kaminski, John, and Jill Adair McCaughan, eds. A Great and Good Man: George Washington in the Eyes of His Contemporaries. Madison, Wis.: Madison House Publishers, 1989. Ketcham, Ralph. Presidents above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789– 1829. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Knollenberg, Bernhard. George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1775. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1964. Lippmann, Walter. The Public Philosophy. New York: New American Library, 1955.

Selected Bibliography

231

Longmore, Paul. The Invention of George Washington. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince, ed. and trans. Robert Adams. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992. Maney, Patrick. The Roosevelt Presence. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Marshall, John. The Life of George Washington. Reprint, Fredricksburg, Va.: The Citizen’s Guild of Washington’s Boyhood Home, 1926. McDonald, Forrest. The American Presidency. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994. ———. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. ———. E Pluribus Unum. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979. ———. The Presidency of George Washington. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974. Meyers, Marvin, ed. The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1981. Miller, John C. The Federalist Era 1789–1801. New York: Harper & Row, 1960. Morgan, Edmund. The Genius of George Washington. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1977. Neely, Mark, Jr. The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Neustadt, Richard. Presidential Power. New York: John Wiley, 1980. Pederson, William D., and Ann M. McLaurin. The Rating Game in American Politics. New York: Irvington Publishers, 1987. Peterson, Merrill, ed. Thomas Jefferson Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1984. Phelps, Glenn. George Washington and American Constitutionalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. Randall, William Sterne. George Washington: A Life. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997. Robbins, Caroline. The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and the American Character, 1775–1783. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1979. Rozell, Mark J. Executive Privilege, 2nd ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. The Coming of the New Deal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. ———. The Politics of Upheaval. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Schwartz, Barry. George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol. New York: Free Press, 1987. Shull, Steven A., ed. The Two Presidencies: A Quarter Century Assessment. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991. Smith, Richard Norton. Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Spalding, Matthew, and Patrick Garrity. A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

232

Selected Bibliography

Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War, ed. John Finley, Jr. New York: The Modern Library, 1951. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Weems, Mason L. The Life of Washington. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. Wills, Garry. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. ———. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Index

Adair, Douglas, 56 Adams, Abigail, 213 Adams, John, 11, 20, 41, 45, 78, 85, 177, 196, 198, 202, 203, 212, 213 Adams, John Quincy, 19, 20 Adams, Samuel, 40, 201 Adet, Pierre, 99, 109 Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 134 Alcibiades, 112 Alden, John R., 225 Alexander the Great, 175 Ambrose, Stephen, 76–77, 78, 80, 81, 87, 88 Ames, Fisher, 104 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 130 Aristotle, 54–59, 61–67, 125–130, 138, 183, 189, 191. Works: Nicomachean Ethics, 54–56, 61–63, 126– 127; Politics, 67, 127 Army-McCarthy hearings, 92 Arthur, Chester, 11 Articles of Confederation, 43, 131, 153, 190 Aurelius, Marcus, 184

Bache, Benjamin Franklin, 203 Bacon, Francis, 89 Bailyn, Bernard, 224 Ball, Joseph, 167 Barber, James David, 12–13, 143–148, 153. Work: ThePresidential Character, 12, 144–145 Battle of Brandywine Creek, 188, 189 Battle of Camden, 188 Battle of Charleston, 188 Battle of Concord, 186 Battle of Germantown, 188, 189 Battle of Lexington, 186 Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, 81, 188 Battle of Princeton, 187, 188 Battle of Saratoga, 199, 200 Battle of Trenton, 187, 188 Battle of Yorktown, 188, 201 Bemis, Samuel Flagg, 28, 109 Benson, Ezra Taft, 83–84 Bland, Richard, 225 Borah, William, 21 Boston Massacre, 200

234

Index

Boston Port Act, 40 Boston Tea Party, 186 Botetcourt, Norbonne Berkley, 176 Bowie, Robert, 90 Braddock, Edward, 37–39, 86, 184, 211, 212 Bricker Amendment, 92 Brookhiser, Richard, 53, 81, 85 Brownell, Herbert, 92 Bumpers, Dale, 9 Burke, Edmund, 126, 129–130 Burns, James MacGregor, 136, 137– 138 Bush, George, 11, 12, 71, 145 Butler, Samuel, 86 Caesar, Julius, 87, 175, 194, 195, 200, 202, 203 Carroll, Anna Ellen, 188 Carter, Jimmy, 8, 11, 145 Carter, Landon, 225 Cary, Wilson, 172 Castiglione, Baldassare, 210 Cato, 34, 44, 190, 225 Cermak, Anton, 158 Choisy, Maryse, 179 Chomsky, Noam, 108 Christ, Jesus, 7, 8 Churchill, Winston, 84 Cicero, 86 Cincinnatus, model for Washington, 33–46, 201 Citizen Genet, 44, 80 Civilian Conservation Corps, 134 Clarendon, Lord, 195 Clausewitz, Karl von, 88 Clinton, Bill, 4–9, 11, 14, 15, 54 Clinton, Chelsea, 5 Clinton, Hillary, 5 Common Sense, 198 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 14–15 Conner, Fox, 88 Cook, Blanche, 84 Coolidge, Calvin, 11 Corbin, John, 222 Cornwallis, Marquis, 201 Corwin, Edward S., 92

Crawford, William, 176 Cromwell, Oliver, compared to Washington, 193–204 Cruise, Tom, 4 Cunningham, Andrew, 76 Curwen, Samuel, 212 Cushing, Thomas, 212, 213, 214 Custis, Daniel Parke, 174, 225 Custis, Jack, 195 Dalton, Tristram, 201 Davis, Jefferson, 153 Deane, Silas, 212, 213 Declaration of Independence, 20, 28, 45, 64 Dinwiddie, Robert, 36, 37, 39, 173, 176 Diodotus, 105–106, 111 Douglas, Stephen, 132, 156 Douglass, Frederick, 158 Duke of Marlborough, 175 Dulles, John Foster, 92 Dunmore, John Murray, 176 Durkheim, Emile, 178 Dyer, Eliphalet, 213, 214 Edwards, Jonathan, 195 Eidelberg, Paul, 59 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 72–73; compared to George Washington, 75– 93 Eisenhower, Mamie, 88 Emancipation Proclamation, 134, 158 Erikson, Erik, 154 Eskridge, George, 167 Ewald, William Bragg, 77 Fairfax, Anne, 169, 171 Fairfax, George William, 171, 172, 180 Fairfax, Sally, 8, 166, 172, 174 Fairfax, William, 171, 173, 184 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 134 Federalist Papers, 6, 23, 88, 106–109, 154 Fielding, Henry, 86, 210, 212 Flexner, James, 73, 77, 91, 92

Index Flowers, Jennifer, 11 Ford, Gerald, 71, 145 Fort Duquesne, 36, 38 Fort Le Boeuf, 36 Fort Lee, 187 Fort Necessity, 36, 37, 45, 184 Fort Washington, 187 Four Letters on Important Subjects, 224 Frankland, Thomas, 195 Franklin, Benjamin, 210 Frederick the Great, 175 Freeman, Douglas Southall, 178, 185, 225 Fremont, John C., 134 Freneau, Philip, 202 Freud, Sigmund, 178, 180 Gage, Thomas, 219–222, 226 Gates, Bill, 4 Gates, Horatio, 188, 199 Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon or English Constitution, The, 224 George III, 39, 131, 189, 202 G.I. Bill of Rights, 134 Gilbert, Felix, 21 Goodpaster, Andrew, 79 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, 138 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 102 Gordon, William, 201 Gotti, John, 4 Grant, Ulysses S., 5, 71 Great Awakening, 195 Greene, Nathaniel, 187, 201 Greenstein, Fred, 79, 81 Hamilton, Alexander, 6, 15, 28, 44, 45, 60, 73, 91, 92, 183, 190, 191, 201 Hancock, John, 177 Hannibal, 87, 113 Harrison, William Henry, 71 Hayes, Rutherford B., 71 Helms, Jesse, 14 Henry, John, 202 Henry, Patrick, 28, 40 Hobbes, Thomas, 54, 100, 128, 224

235

Hofstadter, Richard, 136, 137 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 138 Hoover, Herbert, 11 Horney, Karen, 180 Howe, William, 198 Hughes, Rupert, 222 Hume, David, 66 Humphrey, George, 92 Iran-Contra scandal, ix Iremonger, Lucille, 179–180 Irving, Washington, 222, 226 Jackson, Andrew, 11, 71, 153 Jay, John, 14, 43 Jefferson, Thomas, 14, 19, 20, 26, 40, 43, 44, 45, 56, 64, 74, 76, 79–80, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 131, 145, 152, 190, 191, 202 Johnson, Andrew, 145, 157 Johnson, Lyndon, 71–72 Johnson, Mary, 167 Johnson, Thomas, 198 Jones, Paula, 5 Jordon, Michael, 4 Kaufman, Burton Ira, 21 Keats, John, 139 Kelley, Steve, 54 Kennan, George, 90 Kennedy, John F., 7, 11, 71, 85, 145 Ketcham, Ralph, 1 Kirk, Russell, 45 Knox, Henry, 43 Kubie, Lawrence S., 144 Kunhardt, Philip, Jr., 72 Lafayette, Marquis de, 81 League of Nations, 20, 21 Lee, Charles, 80–81, 213 Lee, Richard Henry, 40, 201 Lee, Robert E., 154 Lewinsky, Monica, ix, 4–5 Lincoln, Abraham, 66, 126, 130, 131– 132, 133–134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 153–156, 157–158, 159 Lincoln, Robert, 158

236

Index

Locke, John, 54, 64, 86, 89, 183, 189, 192, 223, 225, 226 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 20, 21, 222 Longmore, Paul K., 220, 222, 225 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 80, 99, 108, 109, 112, 137–138 Madison, James, 6, 11, 19, 20, 23, 43, 85, 145, 183 Madonna, 4 Magna Carta, 198 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 104 Mandeville, Bernard, 110 Marshall, George, 77, 81 Marshall, John, 19, 56, 61, 74–75, 76, 93, 136 Marye, James, 170 Mason, George, 40 McCain, John, 72 McCullough, David, 93 McDonald, Forrest, 78, 86 Mercer, George, 74, 210–211 Milton, John, 86 Monroe Doctrine, 20 Monroe, James, 71 Montesquieu, Charles de, 54, 113 Montgomery, Bernard, 75, 81, 84, 93 Morgan, Edmund, 136, 226 Morris, Gouverneur, 79, 82–83 Morris, Robert, 55, 201 Mount Vernon, ix, 35, 39, 86, 157, 171, 174, 175, 177, 202, 211 Murphy, Robert, 78–79 Neustadt, Richard, 6, 73, 79, 84–85, 92. Work: Presidential Power, 84– 85 Newton, Isaac, 89 Nicola, Lewis, 61 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 88 Nixon, Richard, 12, 90 Paine, Robert Trent, 212 Patton, George, 84, 88 Pericles, 66, 87 Pershing, John, 88 Phillips, William, 84–85 Plato, 88

Plutarch, 184, 190, 225 Post, Jerrold, 180 Powell, Colin, 72 Presley, Elvis, ix prudence (phronesis), classic Western leadership standard, 125–139, 191, 192, 196 Puritans, 194 Randolph, Peyton, 40 Rayburn, Sam, 92 Reagan, Ronald, 6 Rood, Harold W., 100–101, 113 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 11, 45, 66, 75– 76, 84, 85, 126, 130, 132–133, 134– 136, 137–138, 139, 143, 144, 149, 152, 153–154, 156, 157, 158, 159 Roosevelt, Theodore, 71, 145, 153, 156 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, 34, 35, 86, 170, 171, 210, 212, 225 Rush, Benjamin, 74, 199, 200, 212– 213 Schwartz, Barry, 178–179 Securities and Exchange Commission, 134 Seneca, 35 Seward, William, 20 Shakespeare, William, 139 Shays’ Rebellion, 43, 131 Smith, Adam, 86 Smith, Richard Norton, 86, 91 Smith, Steven B., 65 Smith, William Bedell, 80 Social Security Act, 134 Socrates, 87 Solzhenitsyns, 102 Spanish-American War, 20 Stalin, Joseph, 84 Stewart, Potter, 12 Stuart, John Todd, 155 Sullivan, John, 200 Tacitus, 88 Taylor, Zachary, 71 Themistocles, 87

Index Thomson, Charles, 62 Thucydides, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 63–65, 104. Work: Democracy in America, 63, 65 Treaty of Paris, 14–16 Treaty of Versailles, 20 Truman, Harry, 71, 85, 145 Truscott, Lucian, Jr., 89 Tse-Tung, Mao, 102 Tudor, William, 200 Valley Forge, 86 Vernon, Edward, 169 Volkan, Vamik, 165–166, 179 Walters, Vernon A., 82 Ward, Artemas, 177 Washington, Augustine, 34, 166, 167, 168, 170 Washington, Bushrod, 62 Washington, George, ix, x, 1, 4; as Aristotelian “great-souled man,” 53–67; compared to Cromwell, 194–204; compared to Eisenhower, 72–93, 99; Farewell Address, 19–30; foreign policy, 108–113, 126, 130–131, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 143, 144,

237

145, 147, 149, 152–154, 156, 157, 158, 159; as gentleman, 209–214; as model leader, 33–46; as moral leader, 6–16; and popular sovereignty, 219–226; statesmanship, 183– 192; young man, 165–181 Washington, John, 167 Washington, Lawrence, 35, 166, 167, 168–169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 177, 180, 184 Washington, Martha Custis, 39, 41, 57, 166, 172, 174–175, 176, 225 Washington, Mary Ball, 35, 166, 167– 168, 170, 172 Watergate scandal, ix Weber, Max, 178 Webster, Daniel, 21 Weems, Parson, 19, 194 Wentworth, Thomas, 169 Whiskey Rebellion, 126, 135, 156 White, Theodore, 80 Whitewater scandal, 9, 11 Wildavsky, Aaron, 13 Williams, William Appleman, 21 Wills, Gary, 33 Wilson, Woodrow, 20 Wood, Gordon S., 223 Young, Alfred F., 194–195

About the Editors and Contributors

WILLIAM B. ALLEN is professor of political science at Michigan State University. ETHAN FISHMAN is professor of political science at the University of South Alabama. PHILLIP G. HENDERSON is associate professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. RICARDO A. HERRERA is assistant professor of history at Texas Lutheran University. KENT A. KIRWAN is professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. JASON S. LANTZER is a graduate student in history at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. WILLIAM D. PEDERSON is professor and chair of the Department of history and social sciences at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. GLENN A. PHELPS is professor of political science at Northern Arizona University.

240

About the Editors and Contributors

KAY PHILLIPS is professor of sociology and anthropology at Miami University of Ohio. JIM PIECUCH is a Ph.D. student in history at the College of William and Mary. MOSTAFA REJAI is distinguished professor emeritus of Political Science at Miami University of Ohio. MARK J. ROZELL is professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. WILLIAM GUTHRIE SAYEN is an independent writer and historian. COLLEEN J. SHOGAN is a Ph.D. student in political science at Yale University. MATTHEW SPALDING is director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation and visiting assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. FRANK J. WILLIAMS is a judge on the Superior Court of Rhode Island and chair of the Lincoln Forum.