Many of us, probably out of frustration, often derisively refer to Washington as the root of all our daily problems. But that does a disservice to the name of this nation’s greatest patriot.

Throughout my early school days I, like most of us, dismissed the name George Washington as just another name we had to learn and study about in American history. But as with all things, the older you get, the more you realize just how great a man the father of our country really was.

Not that he was the greatest of generals. Not that he was without faults or foibles. Not that he chunked a dollar across the Potomac River or chopped down a cherry tree and could not tell a lie about it, which, despite what you read in your school history books, never actually happened. They were used as quaint stories to show the man’s honesty and virtue and his great physical strength. While he may have thrown a silver dollar across a river, it was undoubtedly near his boyhood home on the Rappahannock River, and not the much wider Potomac.

These are just a few of the thousands of reasons we study history rather than accept what another says at face value.

Be that as it may, we as a nation still owe far more to the name George Washington than anyone in United States history.

Anyone.

Period.

You may talk about Abe Lincoln, Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant. You may speak of Dwight D. Eisenhower, of George Patton and Andy Jackson and on and on.

All pale in comparison to Washington, since we would in most likelihood never have heard of the rest of these noted Americans without the first president of these United States.

No American, before or since, has held the fate of democracy in his or her hands the way Washington did.

During the very darkest days of the early republic, when a fledgling nation stood up to the tyranny of the British Empire and sought its own sovereignty, its own economy, its own government, its own identity — there stood George Washington.

At 6 feet 4 inches in boots, he literally was a dominating figure in person, particularly astride a horse. But that advantage was only superficial. He demonstrated his devotion to the American Revolution in a very revolutionary way. He was, unlike the vast majority of the men of means and leaders of his day, humble. It was a quality which stood him “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” as was so eloquently penned by Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, famed Continental general and governor of Virginia.

Washington’s two greatest moments during the Revolutionary War included his brilliant, desperate plan to cross the Delaware River on a bitter and freezing Christmas Day 1776, and attack the feared Hessians at Trenton the following morning. That complete and dominating victory kept the revolution from dying a swift death.

The second was holding together and forming an armed mob into a real army at Valley Forge during the fearful winter of 1777-78. It was the low point in the struggle for American independence, and yet out of it stood Washington, turning it into a high point.

When we say the words Trenton and Valley Forge today, we should never lose sight of just how critical those two events were to this nation becoming the world’s greatest democracy.

And finally, it was Washington’s dogged determination in holding America together long enough to outlast the greatest military power on Earth. To use a sports analogy, it was like a junior high football team beating the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers at the end of two overtimes. History had never seen it done.

But Washington’s greatest moment came when he stepped aside as commander of the victorious Continental Army, turning down many in this nation who would have made him a literal king.

Not only that, but after returning to the public eye as demanded by the people — to become our first president — he again stepped aside after two terms in office.

In a world full of kings and queens and royalty, the tall Virginian said “no thanks,” that is not why this country sought its independence and fought for the Declaration of Independence — that document which said all men are created equal and flew in the face of the predominant world view of the divine right of kings.

Something we have misplaced about the great man was instilled in his “Farewell Address to the People of the United States.”

In it he extolled the benefits of the federal government and warned against the political party system, saying “it agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and alarms, and kindles animosity.” And, he stressed the importance of religion and morality.

Looking back across our history, somehow, somewhere, have we lost George Washington’s fundamental, humble, revolutionary and patriotic vision and failed to make it work?



Christy is news editor at the News & Eagle, and can be reached at davidc@enidnews.com.