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 but before the peace treaty, his officers in March 1783 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 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 successful generals leading their legions to destroy meaningful expressions of the Roman Republic. They were replaced with a never-ending succession of Emperors confirmed by a submissive and impotent senate that could place few if any limits on the powers the generals assumed. His officers agreed at least to assemble to hear him once more and his biographer James Thomas Flexner related what happened.
“Indispensible Man” indeed!
‘First in war. First in peace. First in the eyes of his countrymen.’
always.
Flexner’s book is perhaps the best bio of George Washington and his role in creating this nation. Well worth reading even if you think you know enough about Washington already.
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