With President’s Day just past, I have seen a lot of lists of the “10 Best” and “10 Worst” Presidents on the net. Every one, of course, has their opinion on this, but while both the public and most historians seem to agree that the TWO greatest Presidents this country ever had were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But which of the two was THE greatest still seems to be debatable.
At the moment, the Lincolnites seem have public opinion on their side. And Honest Abe was a remarkable man. A man who rose from the direst poverty to the greatest office in the land almost solely due to his own efforts. A brilliant writer, speaker and wit. The leader who presided over the greatest armed conflict in our nation’s history which took more than half a million lives and who was indirectly responsible for the end of human slavery in this nation, an eradication of what was a vile stain on the story of a nation supposedly born in liberty. This alone might gain him the prize in an age when “civil rights” and “racism” remain continual obsessions.
And finally, Lincoln was a man whose image will always carry with it the golden glow of martyrdom, as he was struck down by a cruel assassin at his moment of greatest triumph.
Compared to this, how can George Washington compete? A man who none of his contemporaries ever described as brilliant or a great speaker. Brave, yes, honest, yes, honorable, yes, stubborn, dependable, loyal, all the dull virtues.
Nonetheless, I still believe that Washington, was, far and away, the greatest President this country has ever had. Why? Because without Washington, this nation would never have been born and also, without him it never would have endured.
The first of these services was performed by Washington before he became President, when he served as commander of the Continental Army and won America its freedom from the British Empire.
It must have seemed at first a suicidal task, a few colonial militamen taking on the greatest military power in the world, under the leadership of a man who had been denied a regular commission as an officer in the ranks of the army he would have to fight.
Again, no military historian would ever consider Washington one of the great strategist or tacticians who ever wore a uniform. He made many mistakes and lost many battles.
But Washington was like the hedgehog who knew one big thing, rather than the fox who knows many little things. He knew that as long as he kept his army in the field, the dream of American independence would remain alive. For seven long years, he fought not to lose, rather than to win. And when he got his own “surge,” in the form of a sudden reinforcement of troops and a battle fleet from his French allies, he had the wit to use these new forces to win the final battle and force the surrender of General Cornwallis’ army in Yorktown, Virginia.
The war won, and the new nation established, how many men in Washington’s position, the commander of the only armed force in America, a body of men which really knew no name but his and owed their loyalty to none other, would have resisted the temptation to make themselves dictator or even King George the First of Columbia? But Washington not only laid down his sword and happily returned to his farm, but even headed off a proposed attempt by some of his officers to use force to get the back pay for their troops from the often-effectual Continental Congress.
There is no doubt Washington was an ambitious man. He wore his militia uniform to the Continental Congress on the day they were to chose the leader of the Continental Army and there is no evidence that he even thought of declining the chance to be his new nation’s First President when he was offered the job six years after stepping down as its Revolutionary War leader. But there is every indication in the historical record that Washington wanted to be a great man and do great things because he wanted to do great things, not because he wanted others to see him be a great man doing great things.
As President, George Washington saved his country again and again, on a number of occasions. Domestically, he did it by brilliantly balancing the conflicting points of view in his own government. Washington had the blessing, and the curse, of having two men of genuine genius in his Cabinet, Alexander Hamilton, who was to serve as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson, our first Secretary of State. The two men roughly represented the two main point of views of those in the new country, about how it should be governed. There were those, mostly Northerners, who, like Hamilton, wanted a strong national government, or those, mostly Southerners, like Jefferson, wanted a weaker federal state, with more power retained on the state and local level.
Washington was friends with both men. Jefferson was a fellow Virginian and Hamilton had served brilliantly under the General as an officer during the Revolution. He was also fortunate that he was probably the only man in the entire Thirteen former Colonies that both men were willing to defer to. During his eight years in office, Washington managed to work out compromises between his two protégés that probably left them both somewhat unsatisfied but ultimately worked out for the best interests of the new nation.
It was also a dangerous time for American—and the entire civilized world. 1789, the same year that Washington became President was also the year of the beginning of the French Revolution, a conflict that was not to have the same beneficial results as that which had taken place thirteen years earlier across the Atlantic. It was instead to see France ultimately ruled by a tyrant crueler than Louis the Sixteenth ever dreamed of being and began almost three decades of war on a global scale, one which would not ultimately end until the Battle of New Orleans on American soil in 1815.
Under Washington, the nation remained at peace during his terms of office, leaving European disputes to the Europeans, though even here the rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson played a part. Jefferson, like many intellectuals then and now, never met a revolution he didn’t romanticize, and sympathized with the France that had been our ally in our struggle for independence (although the head of the government that had actually aided us in those years was to meet his end on the Revolution’s guillotine.) Hamilton, on the other hand, thought that our blood and commercial ties to England should be renewed now that the late unpleasantness was over.
But though Washington respected the views of his able subordinates, his own point of view prevailed, which was to keep America on a course of strict neutrality in the coming conflicts. As a result, the barely-born nation lived to grow to full manhood and the lord of Mount Vernon was able to retire to his estate along the Potomac River knowing that his job had been done—and well.
His final gift to the nation he birthed was his decision to leave office after only two four year terms. He could have been re-elected indefinitely, but chose to let others lead instead, leaving the nation the valuable lesson that no man is indispensable. His example was no powerful that only two later Presidents tried to break the tradition he had established, both named Roosevelt, of whom only one succeeded. When the voters later realized how close FDR had come to establishing a genuine dictatorial Presidency-for-life in this country, prevented only by his own death, they elected a new Congress that enshrined Washington’s “two years and out” example in the Constitution. It also becomes more and more obvious every day that the nation would benefit if the same tradition was applied to the members of Congress as well, many of whom have confused what should have been for them a temporary civic duty with a lifetime remunerative career.
At last, Washington retired to the Virginia estate that he loved. He was to live only two more years after he did so and the whole nation mourned the man whom one of his Revolutionary War cavalry commanders, General Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of Robert E., was to rightly memorialize as “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
But the tribute I like best was that of his old foe, King George III of Great Britain, when he was told that Washington intended to return to private life after leading the American army, rather than trying to make himself its unelected ruler. “If Washington does that,” said the astonished monarch, “he will be the greatest man in the world!”
And so he was.
