GEORGE WASHINGTON: FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN PEACE, FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN
Vol. II | Issue. 111 | August 22, 2022
"George Washington: First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." - Henry Lee (1799)
That is what Henry Lee, Major General in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and George’s fellow member of the Society of the Cincinnati, said of George Wahington when giving the eulogy at the funeral of our First President.
At the time of his death, Washington was the indispensable person in keeping our fledgling nation together. It wasn’t easy… The hatred back then between factions was as bitter as today. During that time, Washington had such a bitter personal and political divide with the Jeffersonian Republicans, that Washington stopped speaking to Jefferson who was his Secretary of State and the 3rd President of the United States. Washington, a Virginia planter, was not only the Father of our Country but became an ardent Federalist; something that was wholly unnatural to a Virginia slaveholding plantation owner.
After the Revolutionary War, Washington came around to the Federalist way of thinking whose chief architect was Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, author of the Federalist Papers along with John Jay and James Madison, envisioned and designed a centralized system with strong executive powers for the new government. The Jefferson/Madison Republicans envisioned an agrarian, loosely knit republic with a beefed-up form of government, creating a stronger legislative and weaker Executive Branch. The Jefferson/Madison vision was terrified that the Washington/Hamilton Federalist model, which was anti-slavery with a strong executive, would stick and ultimately give rise to an American Monarchy with a President “King”. Even more compelling, perhaps, the Federalist advocates, and Hamilton in particular, were abolitionists regarding the institution of Slavery. Washington, a slaveholder, was always conflicted over the issue of slavery and freed most of his slaves upon his death.
Our Nation, from its inception, has had warring factions and visions as to how it should be governed and by whom. There have been rare interludes of unity regarding that vision. We are now at a historical crossroads. It would be a challenge to find a time since the Civil War when Americans have such a diverging opinions as to who should govern, what America is, and whether it should even continue to exist. The difference today is that today’s Left, through its Democrat Industrial Complex, is seeking to destroy America as a constitutional republic and replace it with some form of Marxist governance.
The Left hates America and has been systematically working to destroy our nation for decades. They have done so by taking over the American classroom at every level, as well as infiltrating and co-opting almost all major media by creating an American Pravda to spew their Leftist propaganda alongside almost every other government agency, institution, and foundation.
In that regard, they have succeeded on a grand scale.
However, after decades of Leftists teaching America to hate itself, advocating for systemic collapse, and committing American cultural suicide through self-hate, identity politics, and balkanization, we are at least starting to get some pushback. Hopefully, it's not too late…
George Washington, near the time of his death, was saturated with doubt regarding the survival of our infant republic. The competing vision of his political enemies, i.e. the Jefferson/Madison faction, had a radically different vision for the Country. Jefferson was naively and dangerously a fan of the brutal bloodbath of the French Revolution. The France of the Revolution, who was so crucial to the American Victory over the British, was not the France of their own revolution. The French Revolution was a savage bloodbath of tyranny. Jefferson couldn’t see that and was so duped into political, as well as diplomatic, intrigue with the French that it almost forced us to go to war with France during the Presidency of John Adams, our 2nd President.
When discussing the current broken state of political affairs in America, in addition to all of the political depredations and destructive initiatives of the Democrat party, everyone seems to take comfort in the cliché that “There is a pendulum... Things will get back on even keel, etc.”
I hope so, but am not sanguine in that regard. (See “We Are in a Pit, Will the Pendulum Save Us?” article).
If we want America and The American Way to survive as a Constitutional Republic… We will have to fight for it.
George felt the same way when he stated to his political intimate, Jonathan Trumball, during his last day on the job as President in 1797:
"While fearful of machinations, I trust that the good sense of our countrymen will guard the public weak against this and every other innovation and that although we may be a little wrong now and then we shall return to the right path with more avidity.” - Words of Washington, by George Washington to Jonathan Trumbull, March 3, 1797
This was Washington’s cautiously optimistic version of "The pendulum will swing back in the other direction and right the ship.” However, you must understand that in order to swing back in the other direction, the pendulum needs an equal and opposite force. You of course remember when sir Issac Newton told us this, right?
Washington's biographer, Ron Chernow, said of this quote: "It was an accurate forecast of American history, both its tragic lapses and its miraculous redemptions.” - Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life.
We must be that equal and opposite force, otherwise, America will become the dystopian nightmare that the Left has been dreaming of and working tirelessly to achieve.
-Emes