TURNING REVOLUTION THROUGH FREEDOM INTO GOVERNMENT
I. SEEKING RETIREMENT FOR LIFE IN THE PEACE OF A COUNTRY HOME
The Revolutionary war had extended over a period of eight years,
through almost unparalleled discouragements and intolerable trials of
faith and purpose, when the British troops were finally withdrawn from
American soil. The differences in the appearances of the British and
American troops are described by an American lady living in New York,
while the British held possession there. She wrote, “We had been
accustomed for a long time to the military display in all the finish
and finery of garrison life; the troops just leaving us were as if
equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms
made a brilliant display. The troops that marched in, on the
contrary, were ill-clad and weatherbeaten, and made a forlorn
appearance; but then they were our troops, and, as I looked at them
and thought of all they had done and suffered for us, my heart and my
eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more, because
they were weatherbeaten and forlorn.”
In a letter to Baron Steuben, written on the 23rd of December, 1783,
Washington concludes as follows, “This is the last letter I shall
write while I continue in the service of my country. The hour of my
resignation is fixed at twelve today, after which I shall become a
private citizen on the banks of the Potomac.”
At noon on that memorable day the Hall of Congress was filled with a
notable assemblage of prominent people. The members of Congress
remained seated with their hats on, as was the custom of the times,
but the spectators were standing with uncovered heads when Washington,
conducted by the secretary of Congress, entered and was given a seat
appointed for him.
The President of Congress arose, and, after stating the purpose of the
meeting at that hour, said to Washington, “The United States in
Congress assembled are now prepared to receive your communication.”
Washington arose and delivered a short address, at the close of which
he said, “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; and those who have
the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having now finished
the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action;
and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose
orders I have long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my
leave of all the employments of public life.”
A writer who was present, speaking of this scene, says, “Few tragedies
ever drew so many tears from so many beautiful eyes as the moving
manner in which his Excellency took his final leave of Congress.”
The President of Congress replied to his address, and, after reciting
the wisdom and valor with which Washington had accomplished the great
task assigned him, said, “You retire from the theatre of action with
the blessings of your fellow citizens; but the glory of your virtues
will not terminate with your military command; it will continue to
animate remote ages.”
Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on Christmas eve, where the
home-coming was duly celebrated as could be done only in the colonial
plantation days.
“The scene is at last closed,” he wrote to his friend, Governor
Clinton of New York. “I feel myself eased of a load of public care. I
hope to spend the remainder of my days in cultivating the affections
of good men, and in the practice of domestic virtues.”
How little Washington or his friends knew of the future! A task and a
responsibility of no less importance than the conduct of the
Revolutionary war was yet to devolve upon him. The repose of a soldier
had to give way to the mind-work of a great statesman.
In a letter to that great friend of America, without whose aid there
could hardly have been a free America, General Lafayette, Washington
wrote, “Free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public
life I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments which the
soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame; the statesman, whose watchful
days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the
welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries,--as if this
globe were insufficient for us all; and the courtier, who is always
watching the countenance of his prince in hopes of catching a gracious
smile, can have very little conception.”
Later, in writing to the Marchioness de Lafayette, inviting her to
visit America, where her husband had earned such glory and where
everybody loved and admired him, he gave a charming picture of the
simplicity of his life.
“I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and
fig tree, in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and
lambkins about me. Come, then, let me entreat you, and call my cottage
your own; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness
than mine would. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and
meet the rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural
life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish
for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”
II. FREEDOM AND THE WRANGLE FOR PERSONAL GAIN
Knowing that Washington would be at continual expense to entertain
distinguished guests who would come to see him, Congress tried to
grant him a reward for his distinguished services, but he had served
his country without pay and he refused. In the meanwhile, the
hospitality of Washington was taxed to the utmost, and his time was
much taken up in important conferences over political affairs. The
country was being governed by Congress under the Articles of
Confederation which then bound the states, but probably with less
efficiency than thirteen horses in a single rein and rope harness to
draw a rattling, curtain-flapping carriage. The old state patriotisms
were revived and with them the rivalries and jealousies of political
sections. Whatever one state wanted seemed to be the signal for its
neighbor to want something else. The United States were indeed plural
with a vengeance! “E Pluribus Unum” that had so laboriously and
valiantly come true, as meaning one out of many, in war, had changed
about to its first condition and was again many out of one.
In 1786, in a letter to General Knox, Washington wrote, “I feel, my
dear General Knox, infinitely more than I can express to you for the
disorders which have arisen in these states. Good God! who, besides a
Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted them? I do assure you
that, even at this moment, when I reflect upon the present prospect of
affairs, it seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. After what I
have seen, or rather what I have heard, I shall be surprised at
nothing; for, if three years since, any person had told me that there
would have been such a formidable rebellion as exists at this day
against the laws and constitution of our own making, I should have
thought him a bedlamite, a fit subject for a mad-house.”
He wrote to James Madison, saying, “How melancholy is the reflection
that in so short a time we should have made such large strides toward
fulfilling the predictions of our transatlantic foes, who said, ‘Leave
them to themselves and their government will soon dissolve’? Will not
the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil?”
The only remedy which “the wise and good” could use to avert the
calamity of having thirteen feeble little nations at war with one
another was to supplant the “Articles of Confederation” with a Federal
Constitution, and, at last, this was accomplished, with so many
compromises and concessions to so-called “state rights” that it
required a frightful four years’ civil war to establish the meaning of
the Federal Constitution, so that the United States grammarians and
politicians could agree to say the United States “is” instead of
saying that the United States “are.”
With the adoption of the Federal Constitution, it was provided that
electors should be chosen whose duty it was to select a president for
the United States.
There could be but one man seriously considered. The landed gentleman
who had become a soldier and won liberty for the Western world was
soon seen to be destined, by the nation he had made, to be its first
president, and henceforth by nature, if not by the providence of God,
to be statesman, and the “First Citizen of America.” Accordingly,
George Washington was chosen first president of the Western republic,
to begin a term of four years from the fourth of March, 1789.
III. LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY AND LAW
Through the desperate eight years of war, in which the devastations of
the British could hardly be called worse than the wrangling
differences of opinion and sordid interests among the colonies,
Washington had conserved and guided the struggle for American liberty,
so that, at the close of the war, with the disembarkation for Halifax
of troops, royalists and tories, there was a unanimous voice of
harmony for a new America.
Then came the divisions under the rivalry of the colonies as a loose
confederation of separate republics. After that Washington was again
at the head of American interests and for another eight years. It was
a period of reconstruction. The opportunity to have a new nation, that
human beings might have a place of freedom in the sun, was supplied by
the eight years of revolutionary struggle, but the foundations for
that nation were not laid firmly until there were eight years’ labor
upon the Constitutional form of government under Washington.
Probably no man, with the exception of Lincoln, has been so loved and
so hated, or ever will be in America, as Washington. It is the most
pathetic thing in all the weakness of intelligence, or rather the
strength of prejudice, that the world always hates, and sometimes
kills, its benefactors, its friends and saviors.
But somehow, with all the storm and stress of things, notwithstanding
the hate and revenge of disappointed greed, the rights of life are
carried on, and the values of humanity prevail.
The time for the third election of a president was drawing near. All
the malignant virulence possible to destroy the name and services of
Washington were coming into use. He was accused of every public evil
and private unfitness under the sun. And yet there is hardly any doubt
worth consideration that he could have been elected for the third term
if he had desired it. But he had done his share of the work of the
world. He saw that his example would be used as a precedent for the
ambitions of future politicians. There must be a reasonable time limit
even to the restricted governing powers of a president. He declined to
serve more than two terms. Only once since then has there been an
organized attempt to break that precedent. The politicians tried their
utmost means to give General Grant a third term, but the hostility of
the nation against the danger of such prolonged power at last
prevailed and the attempt was defeated, probably never to be
successful.
Washington’s farewell address on retiring from the presidency has ever
remained a beacon-light for the guidance of American views of American
government, especially in its relation with foreign nations.
The reply of the House of Representatives gave strong praise for the
wisdom, firmness, moderation and magnanimity with which he had guided
the affairs of his country. But the kicker was there and his voice was
heard. A prominent representative from Virginia was disgusted with any
praise of Washington’s wisdom and firmness. He raised his voice in the
halls of Congress and put himself on historical record as especially
opposed to giving Washington any praise for the administration of
foreign affairs. He declared that “the weakness and feeble judgment of
Washington in our foreign relations” has brought us under “the
contempt of foreign nations,” and had conducted our country to “the
verge of a greater calamity than had ever been threatened before in
our history.” That patriotic scare sounds strangely like the calamity
prophecies of politicians against every president in every national
crisis. In such cases it is well to remember that political partisans
are not thus qualified to be American patriots. They are special
pleaders for their own particular party greed.
Twelve other members believed as this one from Virginia. They would
much rather have censured Washington for weakness than to have praised
him for strength. Among these thirteen partisans was a young man from
Tennessee named Andrew Jackson, who afterward became one of the famous
Presidents.
These violent differences of opinion and the vicious personal attacks
on motives, attributed each to each, has been one of the pitiable
signs of injustice and incompetency in American politics. Time after
time, as the presidential campaigns arrive, the fist-like will of each
side is thrust into the other’s faces, as those “belonging” to a party
fight to get votes for the party candidate, not for a patriotic cause.
In times of great national peril, whether in times of war at home
or abroad, the president who preserves, as Washington did, the rights
of his country in conformity to the rights of man, which is the only
possible rights of either, is hated by the extremists on both sides.
They both call him weak, and, therefore, though hating each other,
unite to defeat the man who would not lead his country into taking up
with their special interests. But, fortunately, we sometimes have
presidents with mind, patriotism and character greater than any party.
Most hopefully, there are increasingly greater numbers who belong to
their country instead of to a party, and who elect human principles to
rule and to reign over us rather than the ring-managers of prejudice
and partisanship known as “parties.” Presently there will be enough
independent thinking for any one to consider it as unpatriotic to
belong to a “party” as to belong to any other political fragment,
clique, or social group, presuming to dictate what is weakness and
what is strength for the individual mind as its only choice in
patriotism and Americanism. America, composed of every element of
humanity from every part of the earth, is the strongest nation of all
time, and capable of being the clearest and most just for the freedom
of the world. Here we strive for the peace of freedom in law. We war
only against war. American intelligence and mercy are rapidly
devising ways to eliminate the various forms of enslavement,
dissentions and divisions that weaken American civilization, so that
democracy may be safe in itself. In the great European war, President
Wilson announced the purpose of the United States to be for the right
that is greater than peace, in which the world must be made safe for
democracy. And so, humanity gains “a place in the sun” and the kingdom
of heaven is among us. For the sake of peace on earth, America must be
strong in the might of right, and be willing and ready to save to the
uttermost. America is president of the peace-nations of the earth
because it alone is federated upon the principles of human justice,
eternal and universal.
[Illustration: Washington Statue in United States Capitol, Washington,
D. C.]
France and America, in the name of liberty, will be forever crowned
together in the praise of human history. The mutual friendship that
existed during Washington’s presidency is illustrated by a toast drunk
at a banquet of French and Americans in New York, February 22, 1795:
“To the President of the United States: May the day that gave him
birth mark an epoch in the annals of liberty!
“To the French Republic: May she triumph over her enemies and obtain
the tranquillity of peace founded upon justice and reason!
“To the memory of the heroes of all nations who have gloriously fallen
for the defense of the rights of man!”
Friends and allies of France have changed during the tumultuous years,
but, republic to republic, France and the United States still pledge
fealty to liberty, justice and reason and do honor to the heroic
defenders of the rights of man among all nations.