I finished Paul Johnson’s biography of George Washington this afternoon under a perfectly cloudless LA sky. The book is part of the Harper Collins’ Eminent Lives Series and it’s rather small, only 123 pages plus expository material from the author, but it was well worth the read, if one is unfamiliar with the Father of our beloved Country.
The tale Johnson weaves is rather complex for the size of the text. In it we find a George Washington who is almost foppish in his tastes by modern standards, who on his land surveying expedition west over the Appalachians for Lord Fairfax as a young man complained in his diary of his obvious discomfort in sleeping in a mound of hay rather than a comfortable bed. Creature comforts, apparently, was high on his list of what he considered civilization. But this was nothing extraordinary among genteel society.
I found this picture of Washington incongruous to the Washington I studied and learned early in my grade school education. In that picture, Washington was a man of monumental proportions, that stalwart, indomitable figure crossing the Delaware at the height of winter, with ice cracking and parting under the bow of his boat. He was the masculine lion of a man who forced the greatest army on planet earth, the British Redcoats, to surrender at Yorktown.
(As a sidenote, it is my understanding that it was at that precise moment in history when the British military salute turned from Palm-in, like our own salute, to Palm-out. The Palm-out signifies a military defeat on the field of battle. Up to that moment, the British Redcoats were undefeated. Washington changed that.)
This image we have of Washington as the implacable Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and the individual who handed us a free nation under God was not false. This too was true of Washington.
George Washington was also a passionate farmer, an architect who designed his Mount Vernon home, an interior decorator, an incredible grand strategist who never lost sight of his objective during the war; he was the master statesman who declared American neutrality when members of his cabinet wanted to side with France in their war against the British; he squashed Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion (in one case almost single-handedly). The list of Washington’s accomplishments is dizzying in its magnitude.
Make no mistake about it. George Washington is the sole reason why our American Revolution didn’t go the route of all the other revolutions. That is, from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution, from the Mexican Revolution to the Chinese Revolution; the killing in those revolutions assumed a life of their own, and the killing proceeded like a runaway train to tragic results that are still felt today. It could be said that the American Revolution was the only revolution in history to succeed. It is certainly the only revolution to produce a surplus of freedom rather than the imposition of absolute dictatorial control.
History, I’m afraid, does not smile on boldness and it most certainly does not smile on revolution. On those many occasions when mere anarchy was about to be loosed upon North America, it was George Washington more than anyone else by a ridiculously wide margin who stopped it in its tracks and pulled back the reins away from the cliff.
In contrast, Paul Johnson also paints a periphery image of Thomas Jefferson as an unscrupulous subversive element in Washington’s cabinet. Jefferson, a known sympathizer to the French Revolution just as it was getting off the ground in France, attempted to influence the administration into supporting French activities; or to put it simply, he actively lobbied for the French Reign of Terror. The French Revolution first behead King Louis XVI and then his wife… and then almost every aristocrat it could get its hands on. While all this went on, the French sent their envoy, “Citizen” Edmond Genet. Almost immediately upon landing in the United States, he began to subvert America’s newly-founded Republic and to mold it into the image of France’s revolution; he even threatened to take his politics directly to the people.
This was too much for Washington. He ordered Jefferson as Secretary of State to silence the diminutive upstart (he was about half Washington’s height). Jefferson in a fit of “cowardice” complained of a migraine headache and took to bed. Although never refusing Washington outright, Jefferson found no other alternative but to resign his office.
(The more I read about Thomas Jefferson, the more I find him distasteful. I will forever honor his writing of the Declaration of Independence, but he seemed to lose his way after the Revolution. For instance, the presidential election between John Adams and him was the first instance we have of politics turning to venomous ad hominems. This no holds bared accusatory politics led to the severing of Adams’ and Jefferson’s friendship. Because of the level of acid spewed, you can almost say that Jefferson was the John Kerry of his day.)
In the end, the most salient impression I received from this book about George Washington was this: He was a man of impeccable deliberative honor, and who elevated his sense of duty above his desire for the quiet life of a farmer. He was the extraordinary man who denied the exhortations of his officers to become the first King of an entire continent. Never before, and I think never since, has a man denied the crown of unlimited power.
After the American Revolution, when the guns and canons were silent, across the Atlantic, King George III asked American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning the war. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”
“If he does that,” the King said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”
And that, dear reader, is quintessentially the Father of our Country.