CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON THE CHARACTER AND CAREER OF WASHINGTON
I. THE WASHINGTON IDEAL AS THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN IDEAL
Washington’s religious belief has been the object of considerable
controversy, because there is no standard or measure for a man’s
religious belief until the one investigating it gives his precise
definition of what he means by religion, and that probably can not be
done, for any basis of general agreement. It is not so easy to map out
the interest and meaning of human feeling. Somehow no great man has
ever felt that what he accomplished was done by his unaided self.
Everyone has in some form believed in a superior Guide. So a statement
of Washington in 1778 may be taken as the keynote of his religious
belief. He said, “The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in
all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and
more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his
obligations.”
His faith in the benevolence of order and law as divinely designed is
shown in his statement in 1791 that, “The great Ruler of events will
not permit the happiness of so many millions to be destroyed.” In
1792, he said, “As the All-Wise Disposer of events has hitherto
watched over my steps, I trust that, in the important one I may be
soon called upon to take, he will mark the course so plainly as that I
cannot mistake the way.”
That this faith was necessary to his purpose and mind, to help him
through the long series of trials, in both the war and presidency, no
one can doubt, who reads the detailed history of those periods,--they
were so often desperately discouraging, so often both helpless and
hopeless to any human foresight or judgment.
A few phrases taken from the “Mount Vernon Tribute” express the
Americanism of Washington. The author of that inscription is unknown,
but whoever it was he knew. The tribute was transcribed from a
manuscript copy on the back of a picture frame containing a portrait
of Washington, found hanging in one of the rooms at Mount Vernon
after Washington’s death. There he is called “The Defender of His
Country,” “The Founder of Liberty,” “The Friend of Man,” and
“Benefactor of Mankind.” “He triumphantly vindicated the Rights of
Humanity,” “Magnanimous in Youth, Glorious through Life, Great in
Death”; “His Highest Ambition the Happiness of Mankind.” According to
this definition of patriotism, the meaning is not limited to a
political area of square miles or boundary lines.
The noble tributes to Washington’s character and work would fill many
volumes, but a few will show how his life is regarded as a model for
the youths of America.
Senator Vance of North Carolina said, “The youth of America who aspire
to promote their own and their country’s welfare should never cease to
gaze upon his great example, or to remember that the brightest gems in
the crown of his immortality, the qualities which uphold his fame on
earth and plead for him in heaven, were those which characterized him
as the patient, brave Christian gentleman.”
James Bryce, the English statesman, publicist, and historian, said,
“Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising
above its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity,
constancy, and purity which have made him the ideal type of civic
virtue to succeeding generations.”
Henry Lee, who was beloved by Washington like a son, has given us the
great picture of him, “First in war, first in peace, first in the
hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and
endearing scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate, and
sincere, uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was as
edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example
lasting.”
Lord Byron wrote,
“Where may the wearied eyes repose,
When gazing on the great,
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes,--one, the first, the last, the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeathed the name of Washington,
To make men blush, there was but one.”
Louis Kossuth, the great Hungarian patriot, said, “Let him who looks
for a monument to Washington look around the United States. Your
freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and
your prodigious growth are a monument to him.”
Lord Macaulay says that he had in his character, “The sobriety, the
self-command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude
of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no
parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone.”
The tribute of the greatest American to the greatest American, for, so
alike are these two in divinity of mind for the divinity of America
and humanity that they can thus be thought of only as one, should be
known to all. Abraham Lincoln says, “Washington’s is the mightiest
name on earth--long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty;
still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is
expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the
name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In
solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor
leave it shining on.”
II. NOT BIRTH BUT CHARACTER MAKES AMERICANS
Washington and Lincoln are two names inseparately connected in the
making and preservation of America. Each became the leader in his
country’s interests at a period of almost unspeakable dissention and
of indescribable peril to freedom as the condition of social
civilization. In the midst of that terrible turmoil, through every
form of abuse, intrigue and obstruction, they kept clear the way that
America should go, and upheld the America that all freeborn men
believed to be the ideal and opportunity of humanity and mankind.
Washington is often declared to have been so much of his life an
Englishman that he cannot be regarded as a real born American. With
this declaration it is also asserted that Lincoln was the first
complete representative of real Americanism. This is as much as to say
that one born into the richest family in the early days of a town is
not as much of a citizen as one born in the poorest house in the town
when it has become a city. Search can nowhere reveal any Americanism
in either of those great souls that was not also in the other.
Physical surroundings had much to do with the details of their minds,
characters and careers, but nothing to do with their principles of
humanity which were indistinguishably the same. The glorious largeness
of their hearts and their manhood made the same supreme American.
Though less in leadership and in effect upon the life of their
country, there were thousands, if not millions, as perfectly
synonymous with Americanism as either Washington or Lincoln. It is
thus character and not birth that makes Americans, and therefore it is
not place but humanity that makes America.
The hereditary mansion and the log hut were but the outer form of
those two great men. The faith, hope and love within for the freedom
of humanity, in the truth that makes men free, were the same in both
hut and mansion.
Those numerous malcontents who vilified Washington, and whose
subsequents poisoned the atmosphere around Lincoln, could not see an
hour beyond their own dog’s day, and were unable to measure any value
greater than their own personal interests. The very names which they
strove to make great in the historical vision of posterity have
vanished, or their perversions have been forgiven as repented fully.
In contrast to them are such noble heroes illustrated, for instance by
John Dickinson, who did not believe it was their duty to leave wealth
to their children, but it was necessary to leave them a heritage of
liberty; by Samuel Adams, who was impoverished by his stand for
American freedom, and yet scornfully refused an honored office that
was meant to bribe him away from the American cause; by Robert Morris,
who gave his fortune to feed the starving troops in the darkest period
of the war; and by Benjamin Franklin, rich, famous and old, past
seventy years of age, accepting the dangerous, laborious and
sacrificing mission to France, in the name of human union, for a
liberty-loving world. It required the profoundest devotion and heroism
for one so old as Franklin to break with friends of a lifetime, as
shown when he wrote,
“You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy and I am
yours,
“B. FRANKLIN.”
Likewise, when he signed the Declaration of Independence, saying, “We
must now all hang together or hang separately.”
The foundations of Americanism rest on Americans and when they are
needed they always come forth to keep the faith.
III. THE AMERICAN LESSON LEARNED FROM THE GREATEST LEADERS IN THE
MAKING OF AMERICA
Washington was no prodigy, and it belittles both him and Lincoln to be
rated as miracles. The study of their lives teaches us above all
things that there was no accident about them. They built themselves
up out of the material of their experiences and circumstances into
manhood and character, ready for the tasks of their human world.
No man of colonial times lived more under English aristocratic
influence than Washington, and yet it only served as a contrast in
which to define his principles of liberty, his meaning of manhood and
his vision of humanity. So, also, no man of his times was more under
the belittling trivialities of frontier destitution and ignorance than
Abraham Lincoln, but it only served as inspiration and revelation for
his moral duty in the supreme crisis of the American nation.
The lives of these two great men, from such widely different origins,
and yet coming to oneness in such a mutual cause and character, are
vital inspiration to every aspiring youth, showing that the value of
character is in every one’s own hands if he will but look around and
get the true measure of what are life, and mind, and humanity. Those
careers show that the rights of man are never found in fragments, nor
exclusive in parties or single nations.
Larned says, in his “Study of Greatness in Men,” that “A man more
perfectly educated than Abraham Lincoln, in the true meaning of
education, did not exist in the world. When the time came for his
doing a great work, he had perfected his powers, and the simple story
of the simple methods of self-culture and self-training, by which he
was nature-led to that perfect result, holds the whole philosophy of
education.”
Washington’s life was a fine human model through all the periods of
his career, but the heartening lesson of Lincoln was in his
unconquerable struggle to master a way of life, in the course of which
could appear his worthy human task.
Lincoln’s man-making process especially proves, even as Washington’s
life had already shown, that there must be a fundamental honesty of
purpose in building up the mind or no one can ever arrive at manhood,
character or more abundant life.
Washington and Lincoln were continuously expressing themselves in word
or deed, but always striving for the reasonable in a clear-minded way.
Their mind-making was always the process of achieving a humanity-mind
capable of clear world-wisdom. In that kingdom alone is the
Americanism that is human liberty, the rights of man and the moral
redemption of the world.
The cruel martyrdom of Lincoln’s death no doubt threw a glamor of
hero-worship over Lincoln, which does him more injustice than honor,
for the simple reason that the merit of his life belongs to his own
heroic soul, and its desperate struggle up to the light. Washington’s
real life and character have been much obscured by the romance of his
times and the hero-worship which so much prevailed in the literature
of his period. It is doubtless of more real value to American
patriotism, personal character and moral humanity, for both the heroic
and the trivial to fade from our interest in the lives of Washington
and Lincoln, and from the meaning of their lives for the rights of
man. We need to appreciate the human struggle within themselves that
made them admirable men, and we need to know it in relation to the
human work around them that made them admirable Americans. More and
more we can see in their earnest endeavor for the right-minded way,
not only the making of men and the making of Americans, but also the
making of America and the making of the World.
END