There are many dichotomies that can define a person born in the latter half of the twentieth century. Beatles Vs. Stones; Ford Vs. Chevy; Coke Vs. Pepsi. Folks will say that the constellation of your preferences can be used to draw a picture of what you are and how you see the world. But the most often overlooked of these is the one that I think is the most reliable.
Are you a Washington or a Lincoln?
I grew up in a home where history was a key part of our present and the United States, its origins, leaders and wars were as openly discussed and debated as any other topic. I also grew up in Indiana and I think that had a big part to play in my becoming a Lincoln person. In fact, my love for Abraham Lincoln has been so oft-mentioned and discussed that its become a bit of a family joke. For crying out loud, I married a man who looked like Lincoln! On purpose! (*)
My secret shame–the flip side of the Lincoln coin–is that I’ve never really seen what the big fuss was over George Washington. Yes, he was the first president but by my reckoning that could have been anybody. The lot just fell to him. From what I read of his generalship he wasn’t necessarily a brilliant tactitician and in fact seemed to owe more to luck than to skill. Travelling to the homeplaces of both men in my childhood, it struck me also that Lincoln was the more gifted of the two when it came to both brains and heart.
So when Ron Chernow’s new biography of Washington came out and was roundly lauded I decided I’d spend the $20 to help repair my largely self-willed ignorance about the man. Part of me is glad that I have because it’s been a good education on several fronts.
- My husband may look like Lincoln but he shares many facets of temperment with Washington. He is stubborn, driven to prove himself through hard work and a master of his temper. Husband’s relationship with his late father is eerily similar to Washington’s relationship with his mother.
- Much of Washington’s success in life seems to be owing to a combination of ambition and what polite folks call “making connections”. (Less polite among us will say “brown-nosing” or other rumpish terms.)
- Washington owned slaves.
It’s that last bullet point that says so little and so much. I’ve always known that the Father Of Our Country was also an Exploiter Of Persons. But it was presented to me early and often that such was merely a regrettable necessity of the times and something that he “made up for later”.**
The Chernow biography is not for schoolchildren and in no way glosses over this aspect of Washington’s life. In detailing how this man was polite to everyone, charming to a fault and then would turn instantly to a slave and uncork it gives one of the best and most accurate images I can think of. How people treat those beneath them socially is the best barometer for their character. I’m convinced that this man who wrote to his property agents about slave purchases in the same tones he spoke of cattle acquisition was a callous and cruel soul. I’m troubled that he decided to rebel against England because nobody would give him a posh military commission and he owed his London brokers a lot of money yet he turned right around and enslaved human souls. I think he missed Jesus’ parable of the Forgiven Debtor.
To me it is no contest. Where Washington swanned about the Tidewater countryside, nattily dressed and aiming to charm the right folks Lincoln read and worked and read some more. Both men had a sort of drive, but Lincoln’s sprung as much from a heart full of compassion as a desire for a better station in life.
I’m sure that in the remaining pages of this biography I’ll find more about Washington I can warm to. But I’m not ever going to stop being a Lincoln girl.
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* That is, I was attracted to him initially in part because of his resemblance to the 16th president. I doubt he had much of a say in the genes that gave him those looks.
**I haven’t gotten there yet but it sticks in my mind that he set some of his slaves free or something. If so it was after he died and enjoyed a life of leisure and wealth out of their unrewarded and forced effort.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I am with you in loving Lincoln. But I can see Washington’s greatness, not merely “in the context of his dreadful slave-owning times” but also in the larger scope of history. I can’t think of all that many people who have been the leaders of resistance movements, who upon their success are offered political leadership in the new government, and who then voluntarily step aside. I mean, um, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela and who else? And Washington did that. And I give credit to him for it.
I do think, though, that a lot of the reason we find it hard to love Washington today is that he is so fully a figure of the Classical Era. His virtues were the virtues of that time, and his putting down political power is unquestionably in what he (and others of his day) would have seen as the noble Roman Republican tradition of selfless service for the sake of the state, and not for self.* And, of course, his ability to see most free white male USians as his equals and yet feel almost no obligation to those he considered his inferiors is typical of the time. (Cf. Wolfgang Mozart, the Freemason, feeling completely free to stiff the servants, tailors, and other tradespeople who made his nice life possible.)
Lincoln, on the other hand, comes from the age of the Romantic. And while we have been in a post-Romantic period for a century now, it still informs enough about the way we conceive of friendship and loyalty for us to recognize him as our own in a way we can’t do with Washington any longer. IMO, of course.
*You can tell a lot — A LOT — about a western culture from the way it interprets the Romans.
I can’t think of all that many people who have been the leaders of resistance movements, who upon their success are offered political leadership in the new government, and who then voluntarily step aside.
Eamon De Valera. (Another of my heroes.)
*Of course this stretches the definition of “voluntarily stepping aside” to include “did not kick and scream when losing elections”.
Can I just say that being able to discuss slavery, Washington, Lincoln and De Valera on a random Monday afternoon makes me happier with life than any person has a right to be?!? I mean, come on!
I have deeper thoughts and a longer response but must temporarily table them in favour of pills.
Of course this stretches the definition of “voluntarily stepping aside” to include “did not kick and scream when losing elections”.
True. I should have said “voluntarily stepping aside when asked to do so,” which is what losing an election asks one to do.
De Valera is one of your heroes? Huh. Not that he wouldn’t be an appropriate hero for a person to have, but I confess that all I can think of when I hear his name is that awful poem by Yeats about eating Parnell’s heart.
Okay…now I have to google that because I know not at all what you’re talking about re. Yeats. Of course I probably do know and once I look it up I’ll be like “oh yeah.” That keeps happening to me lately. I think I’ve shed some brain cells. Perhaps in the shower.
As to Washington…I’m quite glad to have you commenting here. Seriously. This is where being an autodidact is showing its limits because of course if I were studying GeoW. in a setting with a professor they would immediately be able to elucidate as you did. I guess I should by rights be paying you tuition money.
Because what you say about Classical vs. Romantic is really quite the truth, or seems so to me. Both men are quite the products of those times and as I read more of this biography that comes through.
Of course I’ve never really been able to warm to many of the Classical-era folk, save Mozart and Hamilton. So much of the construct of the world outside of the philosophical ideals that form the cradle of Libertarianism were not to my liking. Especially that bit about the very overt classism. It is still boggling my mind to read this bit about how charitable GeoW. was–and he was–while knowing all the while he kept human beings as property and tools.
I know I’m as much a product of my era as he, but I cannot fully respect any person whose life profited from slavery.
1) I have read waaaay too much Yeats.
2) Hamilton? As in Alexander? I wouldn’t have thought that he’d be your type. And do you not love Benjamin Franklin? Also Henry Fielding?
3) What I say about Classical vs. Romantic is actually a gross oversimplification. But I see that in Washington as a reason we find him hard to love, very strongly.
A) I am of the school of thought on some days that any Yeats is way too much. I like his poetry, truly. But as with EDickenson and RFrost his work has that train-rolling clack rhythm that starts t o press relentlessly on my head. As I’ve gotten older I think that’s why ive gravitated toward poets with unconventional metre. ie. Eliot, Cavenagh.
B) yes. A libertarian ecumenist in love with an elitist, central government-advocating wonk. Hamilton is my House Montague historical crush. I fell in love with him in high school history. It was a class joke; for a month I’d bring him into every subject. My exceedingly patient history teacher spent much of her free time searching out every answer to my questions. Since she was also my mother she had to also endure endless dinner table conversations about him. This was in 10th grade and began when I read his contributions to The Federalist Papers. Ironically Chernow is best known for his Hamilton biography–which I haven’t yet read.
And yes, I suppose I do love Fieldinfg unreservedly. As for Franklin…immhaving increasing trouble accepting some of his randier, misogynistic ways and that makes me less willing to assert that I Love him. Am awed by? Still yes.
C) The more I read the more I agree.
A) Oh, no, no, late period Yeats in particular is nothing like that. I kind of dislike him in oh so many ways, because I think he’s WRONG!!!! about almost everything and a dreadful person to boot, but I honest-to-goodness don’t think anyone has done more with the English language since Shakespeare.
B) Hamilton was your bad boy boyfriend? OK. Your next paragraph reassures me no end. I knew you had to appreciate Fielding.