Beyond the Marble
Some of the most compelling legends about our first president are actually true.
Sorry, The Cherry Tree Myth really is a myth. George Washington never uttered the words, “I cannot tell a lie . . . I did cut it with my hatchet.”
And no, despite his enormous and titanic strength, Washington was not able to “skip a silver dollar” all the way across the Potomac River.
But what is true and quite revealing is that George Washington did not like to be touched. He avoided handshakes and bristled at gestures of overt familiarity. Esteemed historian Ron Chernow explains:
Washington didn’t like to be touched. There’s a story—perhaps apocryphal—but it makes the point that at the Constitution Convention that Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, were talking about whether or not this was true that Washington didn’t like to be touched. And Hamilton dared Morris to touch him; made him a bet he would not go over and actually touch Washington. Morris went over and gave Washington a slap on the shoulder and said, how are you today, General? And Washington apparently turned and gave him a withering glare that he never forgot.
As Americans pause from work to celebrate the life and birthday of George Washington, we should remember that no one—perhaps in all of Western Civilization—can rival George Washington’s impact on the experiment of democratic self-government.
No one can touch his towering significance because without George Washington there simply is no United States of America. There is no winning of the American Revolution, despite the fact that his battlefield triumphs were few and far between. There is no Constitutional Convention, though Washington made almost no contributions to the actual mechanics of the finished Constitution once the gathering commenced. Who knows how the American presidency would have evolved over time without his prudent precedents or the establishment of the two-term tradition?
Washington’s sui generis status isn’t the same as other luminaries of the Founding era. Maybe a different delegate writes the Declaration of Independence besides Thomas Jefferson—it was considered a blasé assignment at the time, in fact, one that John Adams knowingly forfeited to the younger Virginian. Maybe the states declare independence without the heroics and soaring oratory of Adams at the Second Continental Congress. Maybe it takes longer to revise the Articles of Confederation without the political maneuvering and constitutional genius of James Madison.
To be clear, the United States is indebted to all of these extraordinary men. They deserve boundless and effusive veneration. But there is a decent chance the United States would still exist today with or without them.
Not so with Washington.
Beyond the chiseled face on Mount Rushmore and the dozens of statues from Lima, Peru to Trafalgar Square, Washington was a real human being, a man who is simultaneously a behemoth in our history books but mercurial in our hearts. And that is because Washington seems radical to modern eyes. One could argue he was radical because his efforts were an attempt to overthrow the millennial vestiges of altar and throne, that displacing a king with a popular legislature and replacing divine right with the consent of the governed was an utterly radical project in late 18th century America.
Fair enough.
But the more interesting strand of Washington’s radicalism is one that is only radical by modern standards.
So much of our modern political discourse these days is driven by a banal carousel of blasé, faculty lounge inspired, conversations about power, power structures, colonial this and colonial that, all perpetuating a sprawling potpourri of aggrieved factions. Washington’s view of power, however, was utterly conservative in nature, intimately intertwined with notions of honor, inspired and informed by classical ideas of leadership and sacrifice—think of the Roman Senator Cato and the cadre of other high-minded Roman leaders chronicled by the Greek historian Plutarch.
It is refreshing, and frankly inspiring, to study an American whose power was not rooted in yelps of outrage or grumbles of grievance. Instead, Washington’s power was rooted in something very different: traditional human virtues, the brightest gems in the crown of high moral character—unparalleled fortitude, unimpeachable civic virtue, and most of all, loyalty to the project of human freedom itself.
Washington’s exploits of bravery and fortitude were legendary, and in most cases, absolutely true. Four musket balls really did breach his coat and he really did have two horses shot out from under him at the Battle of Monongahela in 1755. He really did lead his own men in a charge to within thirty feet of the enemy at the Battle of Princeton. He really could stay awake and on horseback for multiple days at a time. As Chernow observed, Washington often seemed to be “protected by an invisible aura.”
The term “civic virtue” is rarely used in modern discourse, and yet it was the source of much of Washington’s power; it had little to do with military might and everything to do with what historian Gordon Wood labels “disinterestedness,”—the ability to act on behalf of a principle or cause that transcends the aims of narrow self-interest. Time and time again, power was granted to Washington, not because he begged, pleaded, schemed, and cajoled his way to it, but because he didn’t appear to want it. He was trusted with power because, like Cincinnatus, he was always quick to foreswear it—retiring his generalship at the apex of his power or stepping down after two terms as president.
Finally, Washington was endlessly loyal to the American cause. There is simply no one in our time who even approaches the universal acclaim bequeathed to Washington by his contemporaries. He transcended partisan labels and was careful to avoid the pomp and circumstance of traditional royal monikers such as “Your Majesty” or “Your Royal Highness,” preferring the nonchalant “Mr. President” instead.
“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen . . .” were the words uttered by Major General Henry Lee when eulogizing Washington in the wake of his death in 1799. He was beloved in his own time but is now largely misunderstood in our own. This speaks poorly of us, for freedom requires renewal and renewal is only worthwhile if we know what it is we are renewing.
On this 292nd birthday of “The Father of the Country,” let us certainly celebrate his achievements, but most of all, let us remember that a specific form of power is needed to achieve justice, that justice must be commandeered by men and women, and that those men and women are only as righteous as the lights that guide their inner selves.
Jeremy S. Adams is the author of the forthcoming book Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living From Ten Extraordinary Americans (HarperCollins Broadside). He has taught high school and college political science courses for 26 years in Bakersfield, California. You can follow him on X at @JeremyAdams6.
