CAN WOUNDED PRIDE LEAD TO THE ASCENT OF A WORLD POWER?

When George Washington is asked to be the commander of the Continental Army on June 15, 1775, he nds he must wrestle with his inner demons. He knows that this is not only the decisive moment of his career but potentially also a dark turning point— because afterward some will see him as a traitor. “Far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavour in my power to avoid it,” Washington wrote to his wife, Martha. Yet he is convinced he has no choice but to accept the position and thus to ght against the very power that he had served for years. But how could it have come to this?

Flashback: In December of 1758 a young Colonel Washington leaves the British Army. For ve years the now 26-year-old soldier had been serving as a colonel i n the king’s Virginia Regiment. He had engaged in bitter combat with the French and the Indians, lost hundreds of his men, and on several occasions risked his own life to defend the colony’s frontier. But the ambitious young officer, for whom rank and reputation are everything, never ends up receiving the honor he thinks is his due. To make matters worse, although he is convinced that the 1,000-man regiment he leads is better than all of the other British colonial forces at waging guerilla warfare, his requests for the British Army commission he believes he deserves go unfulfilled. The same goes for his demand that his soldiers be paid according to the wage scale of professional British soldiers.

Instead, his regiment gets disbanded in order to reinforce other units. The result: With his pride greatly wounded, Washington resigns from his position. It would be nearly 17 years before he returns to military service—this time, as the commander in chief of the revolutionary forces that are now ghting his former superiors. Washington changes sides, possibly because Congress is offering him something that he’d been denied: recognition. As a commander he soon rises to become a key gure in the American Revolution. Emerging victorious from one battle after another, he boldly paves the way for America’s path to independence before becoming its rst president and thus laying the foundation for the rise of the United States to the world power it is today—and all this possibly because of a rejected military commission.

GEORGE WASHINGTON PHILADELPHIA 1775 SWITCHING SIDES Having served as an o cer in the British Army, George Washington changed allegiances at the outbreak of the American Revolution, becoming the commander in chief of the Continental Army and ultimately leading America to independence.