General George Washington

11 Key excerpts on "General George Washington"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Hollywood's White House

  The American Presidency in Film and History

  • Peter C. Rollins, John E. O'Connor, Peter C. Rollins, John E. O'Connor(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  Part One

  Representing American Presidents

  Passage contains an image

  Stuart Leibiger

  GEORGE WASHINGTON ,THE CROSSING , AND REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

  Washington served as the first president of the United States, 1789-1797.

  The Arts and Entertainment Network’s 1999 film The Crossing recreates the harrowing but inspirational story from the American Revolutionary War of the resurrection of a general, an army, and a nation from the depths of defeat and despair. After tracing the Continental Army’s desperate retreat across the Delaware River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, the film tells how the American forces regrouped themselves, recrossed the river on the night of 25 December 1776, and captured a garrison of elite Hessian troops stationed at Trenton in a surprise attack at dawn. The protagonist is, of course, George Washington, whose fortitude and strength of character inspires his men to accomplish the seemingly impossible. But how well does The Crossing portray the true character and revolutionary leadership of the commander in chief of the Continental Army? As lead actor Jeff Daniels admits, our first president is one of the most misunderstood and elusive men in American history. In fact, the more one learns about him, the harder he can be to understand. Despite his complexities, Washington clearly exhibited five distinct, defining attributes as commander in chief: fidelity to republicanism, perseverance, a dignified personal demeanor, aggressive strategic thinking, and a decisive leadership style. In seeking to capture these characteristics, Daniels candidly admits not being able “to have become” Washington. Indeed, Daniels confesses coming no closer in his portrayal than to be able to “see the man” (Fast xii).

  WASHINGTON’S LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

  Washington’s most important characteristic was his fidelity to the republican principles of the Revolution. His greatness lies less in his military genius than in his scrupulous use of power. He did not abuse the immense military authority given to him by the American people, resisting the temptation to use the army as his personal bodyguard and becoming what in his own day would have been called a “tyrant.” Instead, Washington always kept the military subordinate to the civilian government—be it the Continental Congress or the state legislatures. He understood that America’s Revolution was a republican revolution—a revolution for rule by the people through their elective representatives—and he remained faithful to that cause. Once the war ended, his job complete, Washington resigned his commission to Congress and retired to his Virginia plantation. He did not lust after power. The American Revolution is unusual among modern world revolutions because it produced not a dictatorship, like the French, Russian, or Chinese revolutions, but a republic. One of the main reasons for this outcome is Washington’s admirable restraint (Higginbotham 69-106).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Inventing the Job of President

  Leadership Style from George Washington to Andrew Jackson

  • Fred I. Greenstein(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2

  The Foundational Presidencyof George Washington

  If indeed he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.

  —Remark attributed to George III upon being informed that Washington intended to resign his command and return to Mount Vernon after the Revolution

  Very few who are not pwhilosophical Spectators can realize the difficult and delicate part which a man in my situation had to act. . . . I walk on untrodden ground. . . . There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

  —George Washington to Catherine Macaulay Graham, January 9, 1790

  I consider the successful Administration of the general Government as an object of almost infinite consequence to the present and future happiness of the Citizens of the United States.

  —George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, January 21, 1790

  The powers accorded the presidency by the Constitution “would not have been so great,” one of its framers recalled, if he and his colleagues had not “cast their eyes toward General Washington as president and shaped their ideas of the powers to be given to a president by their opinions of his virtue.”1 In the aftermath of their experience with the British monarch, it went against the grain for Americans to go along with strong leaders, but they were prepared to make an exception for Washington. Two decades before a nation existed in which it was possible for him to be first in war and peace, Washington was already acclaimed throughout the British colonies for his exploits in the French and Indian War. Such was his esteem that he was unanimously elected to high positions four times—as commander in chief of the Continental Army in 1775, as president of the convention that framed the Constitution in 1787, and to his two terms as the nation’s first president in 1789 and 1792.

  Figure 2.1. George Washington’s well-publicized forays into the frontier and his military feats made him an admired presence in Great Britain’s North American colonies long before the United States came into being. Portraits showing what one of Washington’s associates referred to as his “commanding countenance” were widely displayed in the early republic. As president, Washington established precedents for strong executive leadership and legitimized the new political system by lending it his towering prestige.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  George Washington: America's First Strategic Leader

  • Lt.-Colonel Alan L. Orr III USMC(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Golden Springs Publishing

    (Publisher)

  His love of country and dedication to the cause of freedom caused the people of America to naturally gravitate towards him and rally behind the call to independence. His force of personality as a statesman made him one of the most highly regarded and revered members of Congress. His natural leadership ability, strategic vision, personal example, and adherence to discipline and moral values made him the model for all soldiers within the Continental Army to emulate. Without his example of personal sacrifice and selfless service, the march to freedom could have been without popular support of the people of the colonies. Without his genuine humility and adherence to his personal beliefs, the colonies could have easily established Washington as a monarch to rule over the newly independent colonies. Without his vision and personal ability, it is easy to see how the military could have grown to become the dominant force within the colonies. Arguably, no other person could have traveled the strategic path that George Washington blazed, because he was the personification of the link that bound the three elements of the trinity together in order to prosecute a successful war of independence. Fortunately for the nation, George Washington stepped upon history’s stage at the right time, place, and circumstance to emerge as America’s first strategic leader.

  Passage contains an image   REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER Thank you so much for reading our book, we hope you really enjoyed it. As you probably know, many people look at the reviews before they decide to purchase a book.

  If you liked the book, could you please take a minute to leave a review with your feedback?

  60 seconds is all I’m asking for, and it would mean the world to us. Thank you so much, Pickle Partners Publishing   Passage contains an image

  {1} Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 985), 90.

  {2} Burke Davis, George Washington and the American evolution (New York, NY: Random House, 1975), 8.

  {3} Ibid.

  {4} David McCullough, 1776 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 43.

  {5} John Frederick Schroeder, Maxims of George Washington (Mount Vernon, VA: The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 1989), 87.

  {6} Davis, 10.

  {7} Ibid.

  {8} Bruce S. Thornton and Victor Davis Hanson, “’The Western Cincinnatus’: Washington as a Farmer and Soldier,” in Patriot Sage; George Washington and the American Political Tradition, ed. Gary L. Gregg II and Matthew Spalding (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1999), 50.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Securing the State

  Reforming the National Security Decisionmaking Process at the Civil-Military Nexus

  • Christopher P. Gibson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  14

  12 See, for example, Joseph Ellis’ description of the failure of the Monongahela Campaign in, His Excellency: George Washington, pp. 19–24.

  13 It is worth noting that in some respects, George Washington accepted a demotion of sorts by taking the position of Commanding General. In an instance he went from a peer (fellow Member of Congress) to a military man subservient to his civilian masters, those with power vested in them by the people of the various Colonies.

  14 For another excellent recent account on General Washington see David R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2006).

  Unlike today’s civil–military arrangements, General Washington did not have the benefit of a Secretary of Defense to work with for most of the Revolution as he pursued military objectives for the Continental Congress and the American people. The position of Secretary at War was not even established until 1781 (it was changed to Secretary of War in 1789, after the ratification of the Constitution). But this did not cause particular concern among members of the Continental Congress that military voices would dominate them. Such a contention was absurd in a period when no professional officer class existed. To be sure, there were strands of anti-militarism and significant opposition to a standing peacetime army.15 But even as the Founders debated how to reform their government later at the Constitutional Convention and the deliberations that followed leading up to ratification, when it came to national security institutions, with the notable exception of Brutus (Robert Yates Of New York), their chief concerns were more focused on political control of the military: that is, preventing one branch of the government from taking the reins of the Army and turning it on others, the States or the people, than in keeping military men in their place.16 If the country was preoccupied with preventing military men from exercising influence in the new Republic, how was it that the first man elected to the Presidency was the closest thing the country had to a military professional? George Washington, the soldier, statesman, and farmer from Mount Vernon was elected unanimously in the first Electoral College.17

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Perspectives on Presidential Leadership

  • Michael Patrick Cullinane, Clare Frances Elliott(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 The Meanings of Going First George Washington and the Presidency

  Finn Pollard

  On both sides of the Atlantic, in surveys ranking American presidents, three figures perennially top the list: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The basic grounds for Washington’s prominence (as indeed for the other two) are easily uncovered. The office was created specifically with him in mind. Yet his eligibility to serve was placed in doubt by the hotly contested battle to ratify the Constitution in Virginia, and when he took office, a deep suspicion of such a central executive authority remained. By the time he retired, though the office’s occupancy and powers remained disputed, its existence did not. Washington was the crucial man in establishing the legitimacy of the office, a role that should assure him a top three ranking because, had he failed, he might have had no successors at all.

  If we move beyond legitimacy, then Washington’s presidency poses much more difficult questions. On the domestic front, historians continue to dispute how much control and indeed understanding Washington had with respect to Alexander Hamilton’s financial policies—the dominating domestic issue of his presidency. On the foreign front, although Washington has usually been judged as making the correct decision on neutrality, it was a hotly contested one that left unresolved problems for his successors. And on the political system itself, Washington could be judged on his own terms as a pretty comprehensive failure. Washington, like many of his contemporaries, abhorred political parties and sought first to smooth them away and then to stand above them. Yet, despite this attitude, parties (of a sort) developed, and, as some historians argue, Washington became, by the end of his second term, as partisan as his fellows. If presidential rankings are based on policy successes, there are grounds to wonder why Washington stands as high as he does.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  A Companion to George Washington

  • Edward G. Lengel, Edward G. Lengel(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  GEORGE WASHINGTON: AMERICA’S FIRST SOLDIER

  Thomas A. Rider II

  1. Washington’s Unique Challenge

  On 31 March 1776 General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, wrote to his brother John Augustine from his ­headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I believe I may, with great truth affirm,” Washington declared, “that no Man perhaps since the first Institution of Armys ever commanded one under more difficult Circumstances than I have done – to enumerate the particulars would fill a volume” (PGW,

  Revolution

  , 3:569). When he penned these lines, Washington was venting the frustrations of his first nine months in ­command. Beginning in July 1775 when he arrived outside Boston, through the British evacuation of that city in March 1776, Washington had struggled to create “Order, Regularity & Discipline” in a conglomeration of men who formed an army in name only (PGW,

  Revolution

  , 1:138). If bringing the Continental Army to life was not challenging enough, Washington had to figure out how to feed, arm, and equip it while ­simultaneously building the bureaucracy that would make these tasks ­possible. Moreover, Washington saw to all of these problems, and countless others, while besieging the enemy. In December 1775, just as he began to make headway, the army dissolved before his eyes as the soldiers’ terms of service expired. Washington had to start over with newly recruited ­formations.

  The Commander-in-Chief’s frustrations continued beyond his first ­campaign. Washington’s complaints to his brother in 1776 would have been appropriate at virtually any point during the American Revolution. Throughout the war, Washington faced a level of responsibility unique in American military history. Unlike almost any other American soldier, Washington’s duties required him to perform across what modern soldiers and scholars call the levels of war. At the strategic level Washington ­interacted with and supported civilian authorities. He allocated resources and disseminated information across the theaters of war. He also developed military strategy to support national war aims to include negotiating ­coalition strategy after France entered the war. As commander of the Main Army, Washington performed at the operational level of war. He planned campaigns, positioned his army to gain battlefield advantage, and sometimes out-maneuvered the enemy without having to fight. He hampered enemy logistics and supplied his own army. Finally, at the tactical level of war, Washington planned battles and led soldiers on the battlefield – not infrequently within range of British muskets. Washington did all of these things while simultaneously building the Continental Army.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  American Statesmanship

  Principles and Practice of Leadership

  • Joseph Fornieri, Kenneth Deutsch, Sean Sutton, Joseph R. Fornieri, Kenneth L. Deutsch, Sean D. Sutton(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  America in the twenty-first century finds itself partway between two worlds. Many in Europe today consider the private life of political figures to be wholly irrelevant to their jobs as public servants. France, where open infidelities are carried out with a shrug, is a good example of this pole. On the other end we find George Washington, who acted always as if there were public consequences to his private actions. America today is torn between these two poles. The statesmanship of George Washington was built upon the firm foundation of private morality and public efficacy. He chose the role he would play; he put on the mask of the man he wished to become; he led a nation from public office and inspired generations with private morality. For Washington, being a statesman, particularly at the founding of a new enterprise, meant being above reproach and beyond censure. He would set the tone for the new nation, not just in public affairs but in private character as well.

  The new position of President of the United States was written in the Constitution with specific executive roles and responsibilities. But executing the laws is only part of the function of chief executives. Being the sole national figure, the president, like monarchs, must also represent the people during ceremonial functions and during times when symbolic actions are necessary. One can think, for instance, of the situation in Britain during the Blitz when it took both Winston Churchill’s decisiveness as well as the king’s confidence-inspiring words and actions to rally the people against the Nazi onslaught. In America, we combine these two essential roles into one office. George Washington understood all this perfectly well and embraced the symbolic aspects of the office—infusing it and the nation with his own private virtues.

  Another key to Washington’s statesmanship was his ability to unite a people who had no long and ready history as a nation to call upon. To paraphrase historian Forrest McDonald, Washington had an ability to unite the people who had been habitually used to the adoration of a amonarch and to give the people time to unite under a love of country that does not develop easily or overnight.10 King George III, as “Father of His People,” was replaced in the North American colonies by George Washington, “Father of His Country.” Washington embraced this role and always attempted to act in ways that would unite and not divide his country.

  His actions in office were often aimed at the vital goal of uniting the nation and encouraging the service of a common good. As president, he visited New England first, but made sure to tour the southern states soon thereafter. He reached across the religious aisle to create common bonds between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. In 1790, for instance, he wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport of the nation’s policy of placing objective good behavior ahead of sectarian concerns. “The Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no factions, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”11 Knowing he would not always be on the stage to set the unifying tone for the nation, he also asked Congress to fund a national university to educate the “future guardians of the liberties of the Country.” Washington wrote: “Amongst the motives to such an Institution, the assimilation of the principles, opinions and manners of our Country men, but the common education of a portion of our Youth from every quarter, well deserves attention. The more homogeneous our Citizens can be made in these particulars, the greater will be our prospect of permanent Union; and a primary object of such a National Institution should be, the education of our Youth in the science of Government.”12

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Ides of War

  George Washington and the Newburgh Crisis

  • Stephen Howard Browne, Thomas W. Benson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of South Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  No public figure in American history, it is safe to say, has ever bettered his talent for showing up at just the right time and place. The man knew how to make an entrance: at the start of hostilities in 1754 that would help launch an interminable war for great-power hegemony between England and France; at the beginning of continental gatherings to formalize colonial resistance. Washington was the first of America’s commanders in chief, its first president, the first to deliver an inaugural address, the first and only president to lead a military expedition in office, the first former president to pass from this world. These firsts are the more notable because they were made conspicuous, either because history conspired to make them so or because Washington himself made certain that his arrival onto the scenes of public life was duly recognized. That might mean writing up an account of his early adventures into the Allegheny Valley, or donning his blue and buff uniform at the second Continental Congress, or riding into New York City showered with flower petals. But, whatever its form, his beginnings were designed for optimal symbolic resonance. 5 That Washington could be at once complicit in this stagecraft and largely untouched by its more destructive effects was not a given. As an otherwise appreciative British officer observed in 1780, His Excellency may have been actuated by principles early on, but “Few men have fortitude enough to withstand the dazzling glare of power, the love of which too often intoxicates the human heart, and where it takes possession, seldom fails to stifle the good affections which rise to resist it.” In time, something like this very tendency would animate the partisan battles of the republic’s first decade

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Revolutionary Leadership

  Essential Lessons from the Men and Women of the American Revolution

  • (Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Revell

    (Publisher)

  But his plans of early retirement were again disrupted. In 1789, Washington was elected the first president of the United States. He took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York. Most of the customs we associate with the presidency bear the imprint of George Washington’s character. Congress gave him wide latitude in creating the duties, functions, and traditions of the presidency. He carefully avoided the trappings of royalty, insisting on a simple, unpretentious title: “Mr. President.”

  Washington’s personal integrity echoes across the years, setting a standard that Americans still measure their leaders against. As constitutional scholar Thomas Sowell wrote, “Presidents of the United States lacking character and integrity have inflicted lasting damage on the office they held and on the nation. . . . The nation as a whole is stronger when it can trust its President.”15

  Presidential historians compare Washington to a Roman leader named Cincinnatus, who lived five centuries before Christ. Cincinnatus won many battles as a general in the Roman army, then he retired to live humbly as a farmer. When Rome was invaded by a neighboring tribe, the people begged Cincinnatus to rule as a supreme dictator.

  Cincinnatus ascended the throne and called his generals together. Through a series of battles over the next two weeks, the Roman army prevailed over the invaders. Once the crisis was over, Cincinnatus abdicated the throne and returned to his farm—the only Roman dictator to willingly relinquish power.16

  George Washington served two terms as president, then—like Cincinnatus—he relinquished his powerful role and returned to his farm at Mount Vernon. In his farewell address to the nation on September 19, 1796, he said that American liberty and prosperity rested on a foundation of faith and moral character. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” he said, “religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of man and citizens.”17

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Jeffersonian America

  The Founders and America's Future

  • Robert M. S. McDonald, Peter S. Onuf, Robert M. S. McDonald, Peter S. Onuf(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  3

  George Washington’s Vision for the United States

  Kenneth R. Bowling

  When Americans think of George Washington as the father of their country, they think of his practical accomplishments as commander in chief of the Continental Army, as president of the Constitutional Convention, and as president of the United States. But it is perhaps more appropriate to call him that in another sense, for, despite his inability to accept democracy or, apparently, even to write the word, Washington better than any other American revolutionary had the prescience to envision what the United States would become: an economically and religiously diverse, multiracial society that overcame its deep sectional divisions and whose enlightened federal government, seated in a large and magnificent capital, provided its citizens with cultural, scientific, and educational amenities. Washington’s concern for the survival of the union was the driving force behind this forward-looking perspective; behind that was this highly ambitious man’s fear that, if the union failed, along with it would go his historical reputation, something very dear to him.

  Some of my argument comes from Washington’s private and public letters, but most of it is based on his state papers and those his department heads submitted to Congress in his name, all but one of which survive. The one that does not, his magisterial, seventy-three-folio-page undelivered first inaugural address, is arguably the most important of them all, judging from its remnants. It survived in his papers until at least 1827, after which the historian and documentary editor Jared Sparks, with the implied encouragement of James Madison, who had prevented its delivery in 1789, began to cut it up and mail the ever smaller pieces to people requesting an example of the great man’s handwriting. It belongs with the 1783 Address to the States and the 1796 Farewell Address as the most extensive and detailed statements of Washington’s political views; like them, its viewpoint is centralist and stresses the necessity of supporting and maintaining the union against the forces of dissolution. Although undelivered, as president he used portions in his annual messages.1

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  From Confederation to Nation

  The Early American Republic, 1789-1848

  • Jonathan Atkins(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  I George Washington’s America

  George Washington received official notification of his election as the first president of the United States on April 14, 1789. Two days later, he left Mount Vernon, his beloved Virginia plantation on the banks of the Potomac River, and headed for the Union’s capital in New York, accompanied by Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress; David Humphreys, his former military aide; and William Lee, his personal slave. Triumphant celebrations greeted Washington at several stops on the way, giving his journey the character of a royal procession. But privately, he confessed misgivings about his new responsibility. On the day he left Mount Vernon, he wrote in his journal that he “bade adieu … to private life, and to domestic felicity … with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express.” He pledged to perform his duties “with the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to his will,” but, he admitted, “with less hope of answering its expectations.”

  Washington’s reservations stemmed partly from his reluctance to leave retirement. He also recognized the portentous challenges he would face in his new office. As commanding general of the Continental army, he had led thirteen British North American colonies in the successful war to gain independence. War and revolution had created a sense of nationalism, an idea that the citizens of the thirteen states made up one people. Nevertheless, Americans understood the Union—as they usually referred to the United States—as a union of states, joined together in a loose confederation that guarded the states’ sovereignty. Different heritages and long-standing tensions among the states made state loyalties stronger than nationalist sentiments, and with the war’s end the states’ willingness to cooperate waned. Washington himself had recently participated in a convention that tried to create a government that would directly serve all of the Union’s people, rather than work for the states like the government it replaced. The states would still play a role in the new government, however, and most Americans remained skeptical about the new constitution’s prospects. Washington’s actions as president would help determine whether the Union would be preserved. For him and others, the Union’s fate would decide the outcome of the Revolution itself.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book