Posted on 02/22/2010 11:57:40 AM PST by La Enchiladita
1st. Washington was a real person. God-like images of Washington appear on the dollar bill, in Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, and in Jean-Antoine Houdon's life-sized statue in the Rotunda of the Virginia Capitol. They are important historically and symbolically, but they make Washington seem remote and unapproachable. The real Washington was a lot like us. He was ambitious, enterprising, passionate, resolute, courageous, obstinate, vain, rash, short-fused, detailed and, yes, honest.
2d. Washington was one of the most charismatic men of his age. Far from the humorless, droll individual that 18th-century iconography suggests, Washington knew how to carry himself; to use his own metaphor, he was an actor on a stage. Thomas Jefferson wrote of Washington that "his deportment [was] easy, erect and noble." And at 6'2" (possibly 6'3"), Washington, a physically strong man, towered over most of his contemporaries. "You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of General Washington," wrote Abigail Adams to her husband, John, after her first introduction to Washington, "but I thought the half was not told me."
3d. Washington was a man of integrity. He based his public service on this quality. "Integrity and firmness are all I can promise," he wrote to his former comrade-in-arms, Henry Knox, shortly before taking office as president. While Washington never confessed to the mythical lie about chopping down a cherry tree, even Thomas Jefferson, who became a political enemy, thought "he was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good and a great man."
(Excerpt) Read more at wlu.edu ...
Happy birthday to the greatest of all Americans and one of the greatest of men at all.
That is good to know. You remind me that I intend to visit Our Lady of Malibu for Mass sometime.
I was waiting for that:-)
I think he went to a total of 4 meetings.
Thank you for posting this. I will read it later; too busy to cry now.....
Yes, and 4th generation native American, at that.
I am proud to share Washington’s birthday. And on a much lesser note, the day (30 years ago) when the USA beat Russia in the Olympics. As an 11 year old soul brother from the ‘hood in the noted hockey town of Los Angeles, I wasn’t a hockey fan yet. Oh how excited I would have been!
Someone else might have the details but I got the essence right.
He single handedly put down a potential insurrection of his officers against Congress at Valley Forge.
He could have been king, but rejected the notion out of hand.
He was our first and still our greatest President.
Thanks for that. I had not ever seen that before.
My thanks for that post of the eulogy to George Washington.
Oh, to be able to write like the 18th century Americans!
“Droll.” A word to snare a wordsmith, and it worked this time.
BUMP. Whadda great post!
11th He had wooden teeth.
12th He chopped down a cherry tree.
;)
Would that be the "Conway Cabal?" What treacherous fools Conway, et al, were. And I must add, he was a disgrace to the Irish people. Even Benedict Arnold did some good for the Revolution before he turned traitor... or tried to.
He was our first and still our greatest President.
No argument there, Jimmy, none at all. I am in complete awe of the man.
I didn’t see any reference to the fact that Washington was a Federalist, not a “compact theory” Jeffersonian.
Didn’t know if you saw this.
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