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Posted on 02/17/2025 12:40:24 PM PST by Retain Mike
Graduation day at Navy Officer Candidate School was special. I felt more honored by that achievement than graduating from college, because then all Navy officer programs were meritocracies. The feeling was not diminished until I arrived at the Westchester County where I saw men with two or more stripes and two of more rows of ribbons, including the Silver Star and Bronze Star. That is when I knew I was in for a serious commitment.
Fifty years later, after reading a library of eighteenth history books, I realized the gravity of commitment implied by the oath I said on that graduation day. President’s Day is good time to remember the moral absolute veteran number gave to a military officer’s oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Regardless of how offensive a person we might consider the policies and/or actions of the Commander in Chief, Washington made clear resigning the commission and facing the consequences was the only alternative to following orders. Intruding upon or subverting civilian authority was unacceptable.
George Washington truly fits the title of James Thomas Flexner’s book “The Indispensable Man”. Washington 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 brought into focus the publication in 1776 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 of the Empire leading their legions to Rome to prevent any meaningful expressions of the Roman Republic. These generals became a never-ending succession of Emperors confirmed by a submissive and impotent senate that could place few if any limits on the powers they assumed. The officers agreed at least to assemble to hear him once more. His biographer James Thomas Flexner relates what happened next.
“The commander in chief expressed ‘disapprobation of such disorderly proceedings’ (ad hoc mass meeting of officers) as the illegally called meeting. He summoned a meeting of his own for the following Saturday, March 15, 1783. This was probably the most important single gathering ever held in the United States. Supposing, as seemed only too possible, Washington should fail to prevent military intervention in civil government?
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.
Dear Retain,
James Thomas Flexner’s book “The Indispensable Man” is required reading for anyone truly interested in our Nation’s founding and Washington’s central role in it. No Freeper with an interest in history, shold miss it.
Thanks for the post.
Excellently written, thanks
President Donald Trump and his able lieutenant, Elon Musk, are the indispensable men of this generation.
Thank you for remembering the Father of Our Country.
His real birthday is February 22nd and I will celebrate it again then.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/presidents-day.html
From the National Archives, George Washington’s Birthday:
“Washington’s Birthday was celebrated on February 22nd until well into the 20th century. However, in 1968 Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law to ‘provide uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays.’ By creating more 3-day weekends, Congress hoped to ‘bring substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the Nation.’
“One of the provisions of this act changed the observance of Washington’s Birthday from February 22nd to the third Monday in February. Ironically, this guaranteed that the holiday would never be celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, as the third Monday in February cannot fall any later than February 21.
“Contrary to popular belief, neither Congress nor the President has ever stipulated that the name of the holiday observed as Washington’s Birthday be changed to ‘President’s Day.’”
Justice John Marshall’s eulogy for Washington was special. I especially think a lot of this part:
“Pious, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting. . ..”
(By the way, his “True Birthday” is February 11, 1732. It changed in his lifetime to become February 22nd 1732, when England and the colonies belatedly adopted the Gregorian calendar instead of hte old Julian calendar. Europe had mostly changed over in the 16th and 17th centuries.)
I soooo agree. I have that book as well as Flexner’s four-volume history of his life.
I’ve posted this to you several times over the years, but here it is again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMYaDMVbZtU
Would that this country could be worthy of him again. When he writes to the people as he is leaving office as president he says, : “I shall carry it to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.”
Thank you for this composition.
Now, we want to hear about NOCS. ;)
From an Army Mustang to a Navy Mustang. I salute you, brother.
Kit
Mike, thanks for the post. I am curious though, how this account of Washington’s emotional speech differs from the speech he gave later to his officers at Fraunces Tavern?
You are welcome.
I am not familiar with that one. This one related by James Flexner was in immediate response to an action contemplated by his officers.
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