Thanks, wags
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Posted on 02/17/2007 12:45:14 PM PST by wagglebee
He's certainly up there on my list as well. All of our founders were blessed with qualities you list, and together they established the greatest nation this earth has ever known.
Ping.
And we have rewarded this truly indespensible Founding Father by taking away his birthday as a Holiday. Now we have "president's day" which also celebrates Buchanan, Harrison, et al.
Very sad - the day America stopped celebrating George Washington's birthday.
This man has always been a particular hero of mine.
What a breed of giants bestrode the land then!
Read Team of Rivals. It's a study of the political personalitities and influences of the Civil War era. The expressed intentions and expectations, and how events confounded them or confirmed them. The Civil War was about secession, but secession was about slavery. And secession occured over not over existing slavery but over the expansion of slavery into the southwest and, in principle, nationwide.All very well to put the worst face on Lincoln - but that is precisely what the southern firebrands did, and it led them to create the facts on the ground which produced the chain reaction which killed so many Americans in the 1860s. Easy enough for people to say this thing or that thing wasn't worth it - but prospectively people made different judgements. Surprisingly enough, </sarcasm> not all of those judgements proved out.
thanks G.
Researchers Re-Create Washington's Face
Yahoo News | 2-16-2007 | ASU
Posted on 02/17/2007 1:49:57 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1786597/posts
Bravo.
Yes, we fail to realize (aren't taught) that the War Between the States wasn't about Southern slavery.
It was a totally unnecessary war since only a decade or two would have brought all US slavery a natural death. It was simply untenable morally.
Yet, the passions ran so high that war became inevitable. The North would not yield, and the South was determined to have things there way. What an absolute tragedy.
Not belittling President Washington's contributions but if memory serves a little pamphlet by Thomas Paine helped stir quite a few even to begin the move toward final indpendence. From what I've read as late as Winter '75/Spring '76 Washington, among others, saw a possibility of an eventual reconciliation with Great Britain
And ...*gag* ...Carter.
interesting ping
Actually, we did exactly that, perhaps most notably at the Battle of Cowpens where the size of the forces was evenly matched. We also took on and defeated the Hessians at Bennington. And, of course, we took on and defeated the British army at Saratoga.
Washington's greatest contribution to mankind was saying that President should not serve more than two terms.
In setting this precedent, Washington established that the US would always be a democracy. Without it, some Napoleon would have come along and hijacked the democracy at some point in the past.
So, by keeping the US as a democracy, allowing its example to spread around the world, and setting the example that the Presidents and Prime Ministers should not be in power for life (and then pass the mantle on to their sons), Washington established the modern democratic government which is now being adopted slowly worldwide.
The day of the Kings and dictators and tribal chiefs and totalitarian governments is over. The human race now has a better way of governing itself thanks to Washington.
It was a totally unnecessary war since only a decade or two would have brought all US slavery a natural death. It was simply untenable morally.
Yet, the passions ran so high that war became inevitable. The North would not yield, and the South was determined to have things there way. What an absolute tragedy.
Hard as it is to imagine the US without the territories it took from Mexico in the Mexican War, that war was morally questionable if rather inevitable considering the osmotic pressure of the dynamism of the US economy/population on the porous (yes, even more porous then than now) Mexican border. But having taken the territory, the US had to decide the question of slavery in those territories - and it was utterly unable to do so peacefully.The moral issue of slavery is a fascinating issue since, as Thomas Sowell points out, slavery was an ancient and global institution with which Christianity, from its inception, had always coexisted (see St. Paul's letter to Philemon in the Bible). Yet, Sowell points out, when Christendom became dominant (as expressed in the global span of the British Empire, encompassing a third of the globe both geographically and in population) Christendom became militant against slavery. And only then was the institution suppressed - to the extent that it has been.
The slaveholding Christians of the South were becoming anachronistic. They were at the top of the food chain so long as they did not accept the paradigm of equality, and they were at risk of a race war if they did accept it. They were uniquely situated to resist the change, and they resisted it aggressively by pushing to extend the domain of their "peculiar institution." Had the politics gone differently in the border states, they might have prevailed. And gradually become more anachronistic. Interesting times, as the Chinese would put it.
Washington was the only one of the Founding Fathers to free his slaves. They were to be freed upon the death of Martha. However, they were freed before she died because fears arose for her safety.
But long before that Washington had prohibited corporal punishment and would not break up slave families.
Though his estate was in financial trouble before his death, when the slaves were freed it completely bankrupted his estate. He was land rich, but money poor.
Being a freed slave was no easy life. At any time they could be re-enslaved, they had great difficulty finding employment or housing. A freed slave in the South was a square peg trying to fit into an socio-economic round hole.
Many chose to remain where they were on the land.
However, Jefferson, for all the grandeur that history has accorded him as being a true "democrat" (mostly because of his marvelous words in the Declaration of Independence) never freed his slaves. He, too, was bankrupt.
Thanks, wags
The Washington Family Coat of Arms
The RevWar/Colonial History/Gen. Washington ping list.
Freepmail me if you want to be ON or OFF this list.
bttt
Bump for the General.
Washington will always rank number 1 in my book. Ronald Reagan will always be number 2. The rest can draw lots...
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