Posted on 03/21/2008 4:35:56 PM PDT by Pharmboy
ONE OF THE most important dates in American history passed unnoticed last weekend. It was the 225th anniversary of the day we didn't become a banana republic. It ought to be a national holiday, right up there with July Fourth. But hardly anybody remembers it any more.
The date was March 15, 1783. The Revolutionary War had just been won.
Trouble was, the army hadn't been paid during the war. They were promised that they'd get their money when the war was over; but now that the time had come, Congress was reneging on that pledge.
Resentment rippled through the ranks. About 200 of the highest-ranking officers in the army decided to march the troops to Philadelphia, overthrow the government, and set up a military dictatorship with George Washington as its figurehead -- if he was willing. If he wasn't, they'd do it over his dead body.
They scheduled a secret meeting in Newburgh, N.Y., to plan the final details of the coup d'etat.
But Washington got wind of the meeting and decided to crash it. He walked to the front of the room and started to speak. But the officers remained unmoved.
So he pulled a reassuring letter from a congressman out of his pocket and started to read it to them.
But something was wrong. He seemed confused. He stared helplessly at the paper, unable to make out the words. Every man in the room leaned forward, "their hearts constricting with anxiety," as historian James Thomas Flexner put it.
Then Washington did something none of them had ever seen him do before: He put on a pair of eyeglasses. "Gentlemen," he said, "you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."
At those words, those battle-hardened veterans wept like babies. Sobs filled the room. The coup d'etat was over before it began.
A few months later, Washington appeared before the Congress in Philadelphia, handed in his resignation as head of the army, and went home.
It blew everyone's mind. They were all students of history, and they knew that people who start out as liberators almost always end up as tyrants.
It was true of Cromwell and Napoleon, and in our own time it was true of Lenin, Castro and Mao.
But not Washington. He simply walked away. In Star Wars terms, he resisted the temptation of the dark side of The Force.
When King George III heard what he had done, he gasped, "Why, he must be the greatest man in the world!"
And Thomas Jefferson said, "The moderation and virtue of a single character prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."
Washington stayed home for the next four years, working on his estate and playing doting grandfather to his grandchildren, George Washington Parke Custis (known to the family as "Washy") and Nelly Custis (after whom I named my late cat).
He came out retirement twice -- in 1787, to chair the Constitutional Convention, and 1789, to become the first president of the United States.
But he refused to run for a third term, even though he would have won in a walk, because he didn't want to die in office. He wanted to hand it over to a fairly elected successor, to establish the democratic precedent.
In 1797 he went home for the last time and died two years later.
As historian Gary Wills has observed, he spent his career giving up power, over and over again. But each time he gave it up, he gained something far more valuable: moral authority.
And that's why, when he died, Light Horse Harry Lee called him "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
This and another comment about Washington's church pew being ransacked make you wonder why, in a war to restore the union, federal forces didn't fall under better control/restraint.
All considered, I can understand Custis' selling off family property. But it's still a sad loss.
Thanks for posting. Reading through the Freeper Lexicon is a trip down memory lane.
/bold off!
I was going to bring that up myself. Glad I continued to read. The way I heard it was "not worth a Continental". I think it is a shame that it has dropped from common usage. People could use a reminder of the dangers of fiat currency from time to time.
Most recent, but with little public notice, is that of Rhodesia. The inflation rate is now triple digit +....seems like daily.
We can also point to Venezuela, rich in oil money, but starving.
I guess that what you get when thugs are in charge.
This story epitomizes why one of our twin boys has the middle name “Washington.” (The other boy bears the middle name “Franklin.”)
Kids don’t learn these stories in school anymore. But our sons will learn this story at their mother and father’s knees.
Thanks for the link. I had no idea that the Society still existed.
Thanks!
These are wonderful stories- does anyone know of a good book on Washingotn that relates a lot of these glimpses of his life?
The one I displayed in post 75 above is about the best one-volume bio that I have read.
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