The indispensable man

George Washington’s birthday

“An American planter was chosen by us to Command our Troops and continued during the whole War. This Man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best Generals, baffled, their head bare of Laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers.” —Ben Franklin, taunting a friend

in England

Battle of Long Island. A loss. Battle of Kip’s Bay. A loss. Battle of Fort Washington. A loss. Brandywine. Germantown. White Plains.

Even his biographers will tell you that George Washington lost more battles than he ever won. That is, battles fought on the battlefield. He won many others off the battlefield—including all those political battles that he waged to keep his job. Oh yes, as much as G. Washington is admired and written about these days, so long after his time, his job was very much on the line— many times—throughout the American Revolution, which is capitalized these days much because of him.

At the Battle of Kip’s Bay, it is said that his men fled past him as he cursed and threatened. Some say he cocked his pistol and unsheathed his sword, threatening his own men as they panicked. “Take the walls! Take the cornfield!” he yelled, to nobody who’d listen. A witness said General Washington threw his hat to the ground, yelling: “Are these the men with which I am to defend America?”

His opinion of the troops was shared by many. Including his opposition: One British general, after seeing the rebels, was overheard saying, “with a Thousand British grenadiers, he would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, and geld all the Males, partly by force and partly by a little Coaxing.”

In 1776, it would take a man of patience, ability, instincts, a physical presence, a commanding nature, military experience and a certain moral authority to . . . .

To what? To run from the British time and time again? Until he thought it was time to strike, on his army’s terms, such as his little maneuver at Trenton and the siege of Yorktown. This general was no Patton or Grant. Maybe because Mr. Washington didn’t have Patton or Grant’s resources.

Washington couldn’t spare a man for any kind of frontal assault on the world’s best-trained military force. One big loss of men might have meant the end of the war. And of Washington himself. (At the end of 1776, watching the British close in around him on the maps in his tent, he’s said to have muttered to an aide, while rubbing his throat: “My neck does not feel as though it was made for a halter.”)

Of all the characteristics that the father of this country had, one seems the most important during the war: perseverance.

His men went hungry while Congress withheld the purse. He persisted. His army eroded from desertions as the states withheld recruits and materiel for their own protection. He pushed on. The British held the seas and most of the land. He remained determined.

Year after year would pass as the war raged, with betrayal in his ranks and Tories watching his every move. His enemies in Congress wanted to replace him. Some of his generals would have been all too willing to take his place. One of his top commanders tried to give away West Point. Washington persevered.

Then a country was born. And, with it, a new set of troubles.

THE NATION celebrated Presidents’ Day Monday, whatever that means. You could tell because the banks were closed and the mail wasn’t delivered. What were we celebrating? All the presidents of the United States? Such as Nixon and Buchanan? Or just the ones we think of as good presidents? The Reagans and Jeffersons?

Some folks got a three-day weekend, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But a president, general, gentleman and founding father named Washington deserves his own day. And his own celebration on his true birthday, Feb. 22.

Well, he wasn’t actually born on Feb. 22. (It’s complicated.) When he was born, the date on the calendar said Feb. 11, and his birthday would only become Feb. 22 in 1752, when the English-speaking world switched from the old Julian to the current Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days. (At the time, some folks were inclined to riot about the change. Because the powers that be were taking 11 days from their lives! Who says an uninformed populace is a new phenomenon?)

Much like the calendar in his time, Washington’s image would need massaging, too. For the record, George Washington wasn’t born with an old man’s frown, powdered hair, and a sword at his side—hard as that is to believe. John Marshall’s chapter on George Washington’s birth is titled, and we’re not kidding: “The Birth of Mr. Washington.”

Early on, the young man who’d later become the father of his country decided to be an aristocrat. Although his education was sketchy, he was determined to prove himself, even laboriously copying out the rules by which gentlemen conducted themselves. Not that his spelling would improve much over the years.

Washington’s legendary gravity was an acquired characteristic. If he was a man with a man’s impulses, those impulses must be controlled. There was never anything impromptu about his leadership; his governance of the nation would become a reflection of his own self-governance. As if he knew that he had not only his own honor to uphold but that of the infant republic as well.

In fact, he and his wife ordered that their letters be destroyed after they died. Can’t have people thinking Mr. Washington as anything approaching approachable.

HISTORIANS used to have a name for the uncertain years between the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution: The Critical Period. For nothing so disorganizes an army, or even a country, as victory.

Washington was supposed to have been in his well-deserved retirement by then. But the leader who had surrendered the stage (for the first time) couldn’t sit back and watch his country melt away after the Revolution as those Articles of Confederation did nothing much.

So he was asked to save his country again, and preside over another attempt at the national rule book. To form a new, more perfect Union, he convened a meeting of the most sagacious statesmen of his era in the brutally hot summer of 1787 in a town called Philadelphia.

The result of their labors would be what a British statesman of some note, William Ewart Gladstone, would call “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man”: the Constitution of the United States.

Washington would preside over the birth of that remarkable and still living charter that orders our liberty. Then go on to serve as president, guiding the country through crisis and rebellion again. Maybe only Washington could have done it.

When it came time to lay down the burdens of office—again—and return at last to the private life so long denied him, Washington would leave his country a final gift: his farewell address. In it he foresaw the dangers of the divisive passions which could imperil “that very liberty which you so highly prize.”

His words remain as relevant now as when he uttered them in farewell. First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, Washington was also first in wisdom, judgment and maturity, which is why Americans still need to heed his counsel. Today would be a good time to start.

Suggested reading: “His Excellency: George Washington” by Joseph J. Ellis.

cc: Every elected public servant in our nation’s capital, which still bears the name of he who helped create it.