Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency (45 page)

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Authors: Logan Beirne

Tags: #American Revolution, #Founding Fathers, #George Washington, #18th Century

BOOK: Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency
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While Washington was uncomfortable with such extravagant praise, he had little choice but to accept it. America was more than pleased with her first commander in chief. Stories of his grand exploits were on the tip of every tongue. Scrutinized throughout the war, Washington was accustomed to being the focus of public attention, but this most recent wave of admiration reached new heights. One observer found it amusing that, “in a place so crowded with the fair sex, everybody had eyes only for this Hero. Indeed, we only now and then stole a glance at our girls. His Excellency drew everyone’s attention.”
12
Now
that
was celebrity.
For the last eight years, Washington’s actions as commander in chief had been under intense scrutiny by Congress, the state legislatures, and the American people. His wartime record had “been often detailed” and was “familiar to almost every person.”
13
From the highest politician to the humblest everyman, they loved what they heard. The “public mind pointed to him as the most proper person for presiding over the military arrangements of America. Not only Congress, but the inhabitants in the east and west, in the north and south . . . were in great degree unanimous in his favor.”
14
One admirer quoted scripture to liken him to Moses: “he was beloved of God and men . . . . The Lord magnified him so that his enemies stood in fear of him, and he made him glorious in the fight of kings.”
15
And Washington’s reputation only grew with his next move: he resigned.
Washington paid Congress a special visit. The transient assembly had since transferred to Annapolis, Maryland, in hopes that the city’s balls and theaters might coax the chronically absent delegates to actually attend its sessions.
16
Approaching the lively city on December 19, 1783, Washington waded through the welcoming dignitaries and fawning citizens. On the 22nd, America threw a grand ball in his honor. Here, he toasted to “competent powers to Congress” and danced all evening with the star-struck young belles as he bathed in America’s gratitude.
17
Ready to take his place in history, he awoke the next morning and prepared himself for what he thought would be his final public act.
Wearing his commander-in-chief uniform for the last time, he walked into the Maryland statehouse at noon on December 23. A sense of almost mythic magnitude pervaded the elegant classical chamber as Washington stood before the doting congressmen, while a crowd of gushing spectators in the back of the room peered over a balcony supported by bright Ionic columns. Like a scene out of the
Iliad
, Washington was viewed as a demigod. Feeling the momentousness of the occasion, he was overcome with emotion. His right hand, holding his prepared speech, shook so violently that he needed to steady it with his left.
18
Deeply affected, Washington humbly offered his “sincere Congratulations to Congress” and requested “the indulgence of retiring from the Service of my Country.”
19
His voice “faltered and sank and the house felt his agitations”
20
as he choked out the words, “I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my Official life, by commending the Interests of our dearest Country to the protection of Almighty God.” In dramatic yet genuine fashion, he composed himself and concluded with a flourish: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and . . . take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
21
His horses waiting out front, Washington nobly departed amidst the audience’s cries of admiration.
An admirer remarked that from the time Washington entered New York in triumph until he resigned his commission, “festive crowds impeded his passage through all the populous towns, the devotion of a whole people pursued him with prayers to Heaven for blessings on his head, while their gratitude fought the most expressive language of manifesting itself to him as their common father and benefactor.”
22
But this demigod just wanted to go back to his farm.
After sleeping in over two hundred different locations through the previous nine years, he finally returned to Mount Vernon on December 24, 1783. This Christmas he could finally look forward to surprising not Hessians, but his loving family. As a heavy snow blanketed the estate, he settled back into a peaceful existence. Reflecting on where his path had taken him, he wrote,
I feel now, however, as I conceive a wearied Traveller must do, who, after treading many a painful step, with a heavy burden on his shoulders, is eased of the latter, having reached the Goal to which all the former were directed; and from his House top is looking back, and tracing with a grateful eye the Meanders by which he escaped the quicksands and Mires which lay in his way; and into which none but the All-powerful guide, and great disposer of human Events could have prevented his falling.
23
 
He would live happily as a gentleman farmer for a precious few years—until called upon to oversee the creation of the United States Constitution.
24
George Washington’s actions throughout the Revolutionary War reveal much about what powers the founding generation meant to bestow on the president. With the Revolution, they established a new and radical republic. They consciously sought to break away not only from British dominance but also from the monarchical mold. They needed to develop their own alternative. In forming their understanding of the appropriate powers for the United States president and commander in chief, the Founders had before them the example of George Washington, their original commander in chief.
Washington had carefully defined the commander-in-chief powers through his actions, as he strove to defend the nation without trampling its republican principles. This was quite a balancing act and America watched intently, with many expecting him to stumble. Newspapers circulated accounts of Washington’s treatment of prisoners. Politicians wrote letters detailing the commander’s war powers. Soldiers gossiped about his military commissions. Citizens witnessed his defense of their rights. Washington’s precedents were known. And they were loved.
He was hailed as “the great soldier of liberty—a man whose exceptional virtue and patriotism assured final triumph. ”
25
In fact, so great was the public approval of his wartime conduct that few debate whether Washington could have made himself king.
26
But instead, he became a legend.
When it came time to vote on the new Constitution, the states all elected delegates to their individual ratifying conventions. When these delegates saw the words naming the president “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” they knew exactly what that meant: the powers that the great soldier of liberty had shaped in the crucible of war. These war powers became officially fixed in the presidency once the states approved the Constitution one by one, and it went into operation on September 13, 1788.
27
When they set about to fill this new executive office, Americans could imagine no one else but Washington in it. So his adoring countrymen promptly elected him the first president of the United States, with votes from 100 percent of the electors.
28
In doing so, they placed him right back into the role that he had already defined for all future presidents: America’s commander in chief.
In the same way that eyes are the window to the soul, Washington is the window to presidential war powers. Washington’s eyes faced horrible prisoner abuse. They witnessed the emergence of dictatorial military might. They oversaw military commissions and swift executions of enemies of the state. They also carefully watched over American citizens’ lives and livelihoods. In fact, they had seen so much that they were deteriorating by the end of the war. But that would not impede the great man from defining the new nation.
With his spectacles, the “Father of Our Country” not only saved the republic from an incipient military coup but also wrote hundreds of letters to instruct posterity on how the American republic should defend itself from a perilous world. As always, he led by example, expressing what the new nation should—and should not—do in the name of liberty. We need his direction still.
Washington confronted issues similar to those we face today. And he triumphed. “Held in the highest veneration over the whole continent,” he epitomized to America what it meant to lead a United States at war.
29
And when our Founders adopted the Constitution with him in mind, he became the model for all subsequent commanders in chief.
30
It is about time we looked to that model for guidance.
In a gripping eulogy delivered upon Washington’s death in 1799, Pastor Jedidiah Morse said, “Washington was the directing spirit without which there would have been no independence, no Union, no Constitution and no Republic. His ways were the ways of truth. His influence grows. In wisdom of action, in purity of character he stands alone.” He “hoped posterity will be taught” how Washington transformed the nation, for stories of his deeds will undoubtedly be “instructive to future generations.”
31
I hope so too. We still have much to learn from him.
EPILOGUE
 
GOVERNING FROM THE GRAVE
 
“No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless
interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of
the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than
the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most
conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the
framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies
and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the
advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial.”
1
 
—CLARENCE THOMAS, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME
COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, 2008
 
 
I
n some fundamental respects, America’s current challenges in the ongoing War on Terror mirror those that General Washington faced well over two centuries ago. We have fierce debates today concerning war tactics, drone strikes on Americans, torture, military tribunals, citizens’ rights during wartime, and how to reconcile the needs of national defense with liberty and self-rule. It is not too late to learn from Washington’s leadership as we navigate our nation towards a better future.

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