July 4th (this country’s “birthday”) will be held this coming Tuesday, and the divisions in this country are a main topic of discussion.
We’re careful to not discuss politics at work, or when getting a hair cut, because we don’t want conflict.
Sometimes, we don’t look forward to big parties where we might meet “unfamiliar” people who we don’t wish to offend.
Most of us get all our news from specific websites and TV channels, and seldom use others.
A few of us long for the days when it seemed that everyone was on the same page, but that time has never existed.
Leading the U.S. has often felt like herding cats.
It certainly felt that way to George Washington.
When George Washington (father of our country) became the first president in 1789, there were only 11 states.
Two of the original thirteen colonies (North Carolina and Rhode Island) hadn’t officially joined the union.
Vermont was toying with joining Canada.
Tennessee was a territory of North Carolina and Kentucky was a county of Virginia.
Great Britain was still holding onto most of the fur trading posts around the Great Lakes.
The eleven states were upset about issues in the Constitution, water rights involving Spain and their borders.
By the end of Washington’s second term, 16 states had accepted the Constitution, and the trading posts were in American hands.
In George Washington’s Farewell Address (1783), issued* when he retired as the first U.S. President, he said that he hoped our “union and brotherly affection may be perpetual” and “that the free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained.”
Essentially, Washington was warning the young nation (white men over 16) that only unity could prevent them from splintering into many parts, and from “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” usurping “the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
One issue that Washington didn’t mention in his Address was the practice of slavery.
In fact, he never spoke out publicly against slavery during his lifetime.
However, he did leave a will which would emancipate the 123 slaves that he could legally free.
(Under the property laws of the time, although Washington was one of the wealthiest men in America, he was only allowed to free 123 of the 317 slaves at the Mount Vernon plantation.
The other 104 slaves were either owned by his wife’s heirs, or leased from neighbors.)
By the time Washington died in December of 1799, he’d become a cherished symbol of democracy and unity.
Manufacturers around the world (including France and China), supplied commemorative items—plates, pitchers, clocks, and jewelry.
American women sewed memorial pillows, quilts, and black armbands.
American artists created paintings and lithographs that were displayed in homes and public places.
His Farewell Address was read aloud from books like Caleb Bingham’s The Columbian Orator.
His widow (Martha) was besieged for locks of his hair.
However, there wasn’t much discussion as to why Washington (after years of talking about it to his family) had finally freed 123 slaves.
A year later, minister and bookseller Mason Locke Weems published The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, and this dubious biography further helped bolster his image.
The 5th edition of Parson Weem’s biography added several apocryphal stories about Washington—for example, the infamous “cherry tree” tale (in which virtuous young George cannot tell a lie).
(Weems also wrote pamphlets against gambling, dueling, and drinking.
It was his opinion that over-the-top language, sentimentality, and colorful anecdotes, sold books.)
The Weem’s article in Collier’s Encyclopedia mentions an estimate that his books sold over a million copies.
George Washington’s birthday (February 22) was proclaimed a holiday in 1885.
In 1971, the holiday was moved to the third Monday in February and some states began to call the day “Presidents Day”—a date when two presidents could be celebrated—Washington and Lincoln.
Worship for Washington, as the symbol of unity, had nearly evaporated by 1971, and he was replaced with the country’s martyr for unity, President Abraham Lincoln.
In the late 1930’s, however, George Washington’s “brand” was still strong enough for the German American Bund to use the first president to put a pro-American veneer on Nazism.
The Bund displayed a giant portrait of Washington (alongside Adolf Hitler) at their events—for example, a February 20, 1939 rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
(More than 20,000 attended the event, but as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia predicted, the rally only discredited the group.)
According to Francois Furstenberg—in his 2006 book In the Name of the Father—Parson Weem’s biography of Washington, and Bingham’s The Columbian Orator, were both strong influences on young Abraham Lincoln.
These were two of the books that the self-educated man read by candlelight in his log cabin, and they helped to shape his deep dedication to the union.
In the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a visitor from a more-advanced planet, Klaatu (Michael Rennie) visits the Lincoln Memorial with earth boy Bobby Benson (Billy Gray).
The alien ambassador Klaatu is so impressed by the ideals in Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” that he decides to lecture to Earth representatives, and delay destroying the planet.
When Washington spoke for unity in his Farewell Address, there was no way for him to predict how much the country would change over the next 240 years.
The country already looked very divided to him—with the Federalists favoring a strong central government, and Anti-federalists advocating for states’ rights and a Bill of Rights.
The thirteen colonies were very religiously diverse—especially in the middle colonies.
The societies in the south, the New England states, and the middle states were already becoming vastly different.
(In fact, they may be more similar today than they were then.)
However, no one could predict the growth of giant cities, the fact that the U.S. would change from an enclave to a world power, or the internet.
By the first census in 1790 there were nearly 700,000 slaves in the U.S. (17.8 percent, out of 3.9 million people).
Only around 80,000 people lived in the three biggest cities (New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) and most Americans lived in small towns and on farms.
There’s no record of Washington ever saying that racial divisions might split the nation in two.
He, and the rest of the Founding Fathers didn’t listen to abolitionists—Lafayette, Dr. Filippo (Philip) Mazzei, Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Kosciuszko, and Thomas Paine, to name a few—who advocated against slavery.
Some Founding Fathers, like Washington, said (privately) in their old age, that they were disgusted by the monetizing of human beings.
(Martha Washington burned all her husband’s letters to her.)
However, these great problem-solvers found that issue unsolvable.
240 years later, it's still a battle between those who want a strong central government, and those who want states rights. It’s still a clash between those who want an aristocracy of the rich, and those who want democracy. It’s still a struggle between those who want a caste system, and those who want a society where everyone receives equal respect.
In H.G. Well’s Outline of History (the “New Democratic Republics” chapter), Wells speculates on the statement (in the Declaration of Independence), that “all men are created equal.”
He says:“All men are not born equal, they are born. . .in an ancient and complex social net.”
He goes on to describe the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers as the human spirit rebelling against the social net, and exhibiting the belief that we may “achieve a new and better sort of civilization that should also be a community of will.”
In order to achieve democracy, and a “community of will,” the main thing we need is an acknowledged set of ideals.
Washington served for years, as an icon to create a “community of will.”
Abraham Lincoln fulfilled that role after George Washington’s influence ended.
A problem now is that we have no role models “to look up to.”
We’ve given up on political ideals.
Nihilism, cynicism and anarchy will get us nowhere.
Can we maintain a democracy any other way?
*Washington’s Farewell Address wasn’t an oration. The 6,085-word statement was given to Claypool’s American Daily Advertiser (based in Philadelphia, PA) to be published in its’ Monday Edition. The Address was soon circulated in a dozen other papers, 40 pamphlets, posters in public spaces, and books (like Bingham’s The Columbian Orator) all over the nation.
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