Aaron Houston for The New York Times
The 1787 letter from George Washington, beneath his image in a scrapbook begun in 1826.
Posted on 04/27/2007 3:43:43 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Aaron Houston for The New York Times
The 1787 letter from George Washington, beneath his image in a scrapbook begun in 1826.
Aaron Houston for The New York Times
Bill Schroh, director of operations at the Liberty Hall
Museum, looking at the Washington letter.
UNION, N.J., April 26 — The letter from George Washington is pasted between poetry and party invitations, stuffed into a dusty scrapbook amid jokes and cutouts of handsome men, and all the highlights of a lucky little girl’s life.
It was written in May 1787 and addressed to Jacob Morris, grandfather of Julia Kean, the precocious 10-year-old who started the brown leather scrapbook in 1826 and put the letter under a portrait of the nation’s first president.
The letter is just 111 words long, a scant two paragraphs, but it mentions a rival of Washington, Horatio Gates, and includes enough hints of intrigue to whet the appetite of scholars. They learned of the letter’s discovery only recently, after it was found among the private papers of one of New Jersey’s most prominent families.
“The happiness of this Country depend much upon the deliberations of the federal Convention which is now sitting,” reads the second paragraph of the quill-and-ink letter. “It, however, can only lay the foundation — the community at large must raise the edifice.”
Washington was writing from Philadelphia, where the Constitutional Convention was under way. It was two years before he became president.
His correspondence was wide and frequent, but discoveries of his letters, especially those in which he says something notable, are somewhat rare, scholars and archivists say. It is rarer still to find such a letter in so unusual a place as a child’s scrapbook.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
does it clear up that 2nd Amendment quandary
The RevWar/Colonial History/ General Washington ping list.
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Not this...but The General made it clear on several occasions about his feelings on firearms. He would be an NRA member if he was alive today.
How many times in the text does George advocate the need to “cut and run” and that “America is a loser”?
Wow!
Sad we didn’t pay heed...
“The community at large must raise the edifice...”
Easy to say when the community isn’t suckin on the government hooters, not so easy now.
no they would arrest him for wanting to win wars
Good question. History shows us just the opposite: he was fearless on the battlefield, and on at least one occasion he had to be led off the battlefield because he would have been either killed or captured if he continued to face the enemy (this was at the invasion of Manhattan at Kips’ Bay).
He understood the limitations of his forces, and worked within that. He was, IMHO, much more adept strategically than is commonly believed.
Actually, George was somewhat of an isolationist and warned us not to get entangled in alliances with foreign nations.
Fyi..
Nope, but
“It, however, can only lay the foundation — the community at large must raise the edifice.”
Gives fuel to the "living document" tactic for it's destruction.
Damn that Washington !
It has generally been American policy to avoid foreign entanglements, but it is quite a different matter to cut and run (for some strange notion of political expediency) from an enemy that attacked us repeatedly over the years, finally culminating with an attack on our soil, all the while declaring that it is our armed forces who are the losers, eh?
Could not agree more. Other positives: He was not afraid to decide on a bold stroke (for example, the first Battle of Trenton) and was an excellent judge of character (picking his aides very well) and, as noted, was fearless on the battlefield. Did he make mistakes? Yes—but his perserverance eventually made all of us winners.
bump for later read!
Washington included a postscript:
PS - Make sure we don’t get any carpetbaggers from Illinois/Arkansas/NY State. Your pal, GW.
Reid and Pelosi would have said that the 'war is lost' we have been fighting it for 8 years!
No, he wasn't an isolationist, he understood that nations change alliances based on their own interests, as we did with France.
He expected the United States to become a world power, but did not want to get drawn into unnecessary wars until we had become stronger.
Our weakness in the war of 1812 showed how wise he was in this regard.
ping...
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