Posted on 02/21/2023 11:46:56 AM PST by Retain Mike
George Washington was truly the “Indispensable Man”. He commanded a consistently ragged, underfed, seldom paid, often mutinous amalgam of regulars and militia through over eight years of war. Toward the end after Yorktown in October 1781, his officers were determined to confront the Continental Congress with a list of truly legitimate, morally imperative grievances this body had ignored.
Washington opposed this initiative, which for him was brought into sharp focus by publication in 1775 of the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He foresaw in this undertaking an outcome similar to generals leading legions marching to destroy the Roman Republic and replacing it with a never-ending succession of emperors militarily successful and confirmed by a submissive and impotent senate, but who were ultimately corrupted by power. The officers agreed at least to assemble to hear him once more. His biographer James Thomas Flexner relates what happened next.
“As he looked at his command, Washington appeared ‘sensibly agitated.’ For the first time since he had won the heart of the army at Cambridge, Washington saw in the faces of his officers not affection, not pleasure in his being present, but resentment, embarrassment, and in some cases anger.
‘If my conduct,’ Washington said, ‘heretofore had not evinced to you that I have been a faithful friend to the army, my declaration of it at this time would be equally unavailing and improper. But as I was among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country; as I have never left your side one moment but when called from you on public duty; as I have been the common companion and witness of your distresses, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits; as I have ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army; as my heart has ever expanded with joy when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has risen when the mouth of distraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.’ Washington paused to examine the faces before him: they were unmoved.
Washington then assured his hearers that it was ‘My decided opinion’ that Congress entertained ‘exalted sentiments of the services of the army’ and would, despite the slowness inherent in deliberative bodies, act justly. He urged the officers ‘ not to open the floodgates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood…..you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of this glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, ‘had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’
Washington had finished his speech, but the chill in the Temple had not thawed. He reached in his pocket for a letter from a member of Congress that showed what the body was trying to do…..The officers stirred impatiently in their seats, and then suddenly every heart missed a beat. Something was the matter with His Excellency. He seemed unable to read the paper. He paused in bewilderment. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. And then he pulled out something that only his intimates had seen him wear, a pair of glasses. With infinite sweetness and melancholy, he explained, ‘Gentlemen you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown grey but almost blind in service to my country.’
This simple statement achieved what all Washington’s rhetoric and all his arguments had been unable to achieve. The officers were instantly in tears, and, from behind shining drops, their eyes looked with love at the commander who had led them so far. Washington had saved the United States from tyranny and civil discord. As Jefferson was later to comment, ‘The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others had been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish’.
Americans can never be adequately grateful that George Washington possessed the power and the will to intervene effectively in what may well have been the most dangerous hour the United States has ever known.”
George Washington. The real Captain America.
Indispensable only because neither Joe Biden nor Pete Buttigieg were available back then.
Amen!
Our current president is most definitely dispensable and undoubtedly incontinent.
That’s how the course of history for this great nation was forged. But unfortunately, the Dems have made fools of many.
bump
Did you mean to say that Biden is dependsable?
Your post is confusing.
What you refer to is the Newburgh Conspiracy of March 1783.
Washington managed, in part, to cool tempers by promising to exhort congress and the states to form a stronger union. In his June 1783 circular letter to the states, he rhetorically asked if the revolution was a blessing or a curse.3 To remain a blessing, he urged “an indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head.” The war was the thin glue that held the states together. Without it, why remain in confederation, especially when congress was powerless to enforce its resolutions?4
Whatever Happened to the Articles of Confederation Part III.
One could say that Brandon is the CinC of the Incontinent Army.
And then he went and did this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMYaDMVbZtU
Good video.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-washington-critics_b_1289485
Today, while remembering George Washington, Father Of Our Country, I choose instead to remember his biggest and most vocal critic, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Because the republicans of his day would later elect Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson’s party would later split in the 1820’s, in Andrew Jackson’s time. At this point, some of them began calling themselves democrats (again, usually small-”d”), which later led to the party being called “the Democracy”... and, finally, the “Democratic Party” we all know today.
The hour in which we now survive is cursed with a meanness of spirit and a calloused morality more severe, even, than when our dear Washington saved a teetering republic from chaos. Then there was belief in God. There was dismay at government evil. Today neither sentiment dominates our culture. We are lost in a Godless immorality that pervades all aspects of our civil and personal life. There is no reason to believe we have the will, the courage, or the ability to survive the final denouement of this once great effort to enshrine
human dignity at the center of culture.
Benjamin Franklin Bache didn’t singlehandedly start the opposition to the Federalists in this country. But while saying so would be inaccurate, it is without doubt that Bache was one of the (little-”f”) “founding fathers” of the Democratic Party.
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/press-attacks/
At the time of his inauguration, George Washington was described in almost universally glorified terms by the national presses. However, by the end of the President’s first term, hostile newspaper writers were attacking the administration’s domestic and foreign policy. These attacks escalated in Washington’s second term into personal attacks questioning his integrity, republican principles, and even military reputation. While the harsh attacks may have initially backfired on Washington’s political opponents, the President’s bad press signified the opening of a new type of political force, and one that had significant effects on the course of the Washington presidency.
Yes. That is right. I will fix that.
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