George Washington As A Hero
Dr. Richard P. McCormick (1969)

America, as a young nation, needed a hero, and George Washington was the logical choice. Richard P. McCormick, Chairman of the History Department at Rutgers University, traces the evolution of Washington’s image from the austere portrait of Gilbert Stuart and the mythmaking of Parson Weems through the distinctly unscholarly practices of Jared Sparks, who went so far as to fix Washington’s spelling and edit out any indelicate comments that might negatively affect Washington’s reputation. He discusses John Marshall’s voluminous – and dull – early biography, Washington Irving’s literary effort, and the revisionism of the 1930s. Dr. McCormick argues that Washington’s most important quality was his restraint. He was “a symbol of the republican man with his reason dominating, with a tight control over his passions and his emotions,” an essential “figure of stability” and “the most distinctive and most significant symbol of national unity.”

I share relatively little in common with the man who we are met here today to eulogize, but I can claim at least one remote kind of association. Washington spent two extremely difficult, and one might almost say, uncongenial winters in Morristown. It was my pleasure to spend two extraordinarily congenial summers in Morristown back in 1936 and 1937. At that time, I first became associated with Mel Weig and with the Morristown National Historical Park. Although this did not mark the beginning of my interest in Washington, it was, in fact, during those two summers when I was almost exclusively occupied in reading the correspondence of Washington and related historical material, that I developed my great admiration for the man whom we properly recognize today as the greatest of our national heroes. l feel indebted to Morristown in many ways for contributing to my historic education, not least of all, to educating me to the greatness of Washington.

I think it might also be appropriate this afternoon, in recalling Washington, to recall as well, the four men, Messrs. Randolph, Halstead, Halsey and Lidgerwood, who had the patriotic vision in 1873 to acquire the Ford Mansion, Washington’s headquarters, and institute the necessary arrangements for its preservation. In that act, of course, they were among the pioneers of historic preservation in the United States, and they were, in fact, the pioneers of historic preservation in New Jersey. It was entirely fitting that the Ford Mansion should be the first historic house in New Jersey, and it remains today our greatest historic shrine in this state. I pay my tribute to them and to the cause to which they contributed so greatly.

In observing Washington’s birthday, we are of course, participating in the second oldest of our national rituals; the oldest is the celebration of the anniversary of our independence. That event, was, of course, celebrated first in 1777; but shortly after the death of Washington, the celebration of Washington’s birthday was quickly elevated to the position of a national ritual, and no one could hope to count the millions of orations that have been delivered, not only in every corner of this land, but indeed around the world in praise of the man who is our outstanding national hero. Perhaps the most famous of all of those Washington orations was the one that Edward Everett delivered on some one hundred twenty-nine occasions while he was engaged in raising funds for the Ladies Association of Mount Vernon. It was a distinguished address, but I would remind you that among its other features, it was two hours in length. Whether this is some possible index of the relative patriotism of this generation as opposed to the generation of the eighteen fifties, I do not know, but I rather doubt your ability to survive, in this latter day, an address of two hours duration, and I promise you I shall not trespass upon your time for two hours.

It is customary, of course, in delivering a Washington birthday oration, as part of the national ritual, to be solemn, dignified and eulogistic, and it is almost a requisite part of the ritual that the address should conclude in terms of the immediate relevance of George Washington and his sage advice to whatever particular crisis the nation may face at the moment. I do not intend to adhere to this format; instead, with your indulgence, I should like to consider with you how George Washington became our greatest national hero, and this involves some consideration of how heroes are made and why they are made. And, finally, I hope to suggest to you some particular meaning that we can associate with George Washington as a hero in the present day.

It is necessary, I think, in order to get a proper perspective on the heroic qualities of George Washington, to recognize certain peculiarities about this nation’s history. I don’t know whether it ever occurred to you, but we are a singularly historic nation. Most of the nations of the world with which we are familiar— England, France, Germany, Greece—whatever it may be, find their origins in some misty, dim, even legendary past. No one knows when Greece began; no one knows when England began. Those nations have no precise origins; they predated accurate historical records. Our nation is unique in that we can document almost every moment from the time that the first ships landed at Jamestown in 1607 down to the present. We need not, therefore, resort to legendary explanations of the origins of the United States. Our origins are historic; they can be documented; they can be substantiated with rigid historic precision.

But despite the fact that our origins can be so precisely dated, and so fully explained, there seems to be a tendency in all peoples, and even among ourselves, to be less than content with what the bare historical record tells us, and to add to that record, something of legend. There is frequently in our recital of our national experience, a kind of tension between the objective historical record and the legendary image that we somehow or other feel under compulsion to concoct in order to explain our nation’s origin.

We encounter a similar difficulty with respect to our national heroes, and most particularly, with respect to George Washington. Here is a very unusual national hero. He is unlike Romulus and Remus, El Cid, Saint Louis, or King Arthur, in that he is not a legendary figure. Again, he is a figure of history. We have innumerable volumes written about Washington, and behind those volumes lie some thirty volumes of the published writings of Washington. Not a scrap survives of the writings of Romulus and Remus or King Arthur or Saint Louis or the other legendary heroes to which many of our older nations give their homage and allegiance. But again, we find it necessary, in the process of making our heroes useable—to ascribe to them something beyond a written record; to ascribe to them legendary qualities because it seems to be the nature of heroes that they must, somehow be beyond ordinary mortals; that they must take on special qualities to which we can ascribe only legendary origins.

The new American nation needed heroes just as it needed a name or a flag or the other symbols, that taken in combination, were to give us a national identity. In other nations, the process of acquiring heroes, symbols, a sense of identity was to require, in many instances, a process of centuries; here, in this new nation, everything had to be done quickly and here the process of creating our heroes, our symbols, our myths, was to take place within a matter of years.

For reasons associated with our national culture, reasons that I cannot attempt to elucidate this afternoon, our nation seems to require an extraordinary array of heroes; from the Davy Crocketts to the Joe Namaths. We have even gotten to the point now where, with singular American efficiency, we are creating heroes on a mass production basis. So we establish what we call “Halls of Fame.” There are halls of fame to honor not merely our distinguished statesmen, not only our great poets and literary figures, but indeed, our football players and our tennis players, our baseball players and, goodness knows, one day, we may even have one for college professors. But these mass-produced heroes that our nation has consumed, if you will, do not, for the most part, survive, and we can think of many men in the past of our nation who enjoyed great vogue for some brief period of time as heroes, but who are now scarcely remembered.

If we went back to the eighteen forties, it would seem as though there was scarcely a young lady alive who did not cherish a lock of Henry Clay’s hair; and it is indeed a rare museum that one can visit in almost any part of the United States that does not have on display someplace a lock of Henry Clay’s hair. There was a time, too, when General Grant was one of our greatest and most vivid national heroes, but now, he is relegated to what might be called the larger pantheon of American heroes. I am sure we can think of others who might fit into that same general category. But the one and the greatest hero who has survived most vigorously, and we trust shall survive as long as this nation endures is George Washington.

How did Washington become a hero and what did it mean to translate Washington into heroic dimensions? Washington was, of course, an obvious candidate for heroic stature. The process of elevating Washington to the role of a hero began even in his own lifetime and one can read in the records of his contemporaries an extraordinary regard for this remarkable man who somehow or other, even in his own time, seemed to stand above all other men. After his death, however, the image of Washington was transmitted to posterity by various writers and painters and sculptors, and through them, we were to acquire a new and, from time to time, different understanding of George Washington. Those who were earliest in the practice of creating a heroic image of Washington were Parson Weems and Gilbert Stuart. Whenever one conjures up in one’s mind a picture of Washington, isn’t it curious how we all think of him in terms of that stolid, somewhat stiff, almost inhuman portrait by Gilbert Stuart. We all know that the best likenesses of George Washington were those done by Peale and by Trumbull. Somehow or other, the Peale and the Trumbull portraits, perhaps because they are portraits of recognizable human beings, have never enjoyed wide acclaim, but a Stuart portrait, which, as a likeness is much less satisfactory than the others, nevertheless is the one that we have accepted, most of us I take it, as our personal image of Washington.

And Parson Weems—a name, of course, famous to all of you. A curious character, he was born the youngest of nineteen children. During the Revolution, he was studying in England; in 1784, he was ordained a priest of the Anglican Church; returned here shortly thereafter and for a few years served as a parson. He occupied his last pulpit, however, in 1793. This did not prevent him, somewhat later, from describing himself on the title page of his life of Washington as rector of the Mount Vernon Church. There was no church at Mount Vernon and, quite obviously, Parson Weems could not have been rector of that non-existent church. Having left the church in 1793, he found congenial occupation as an itinerant bookseller. He traveled about the countryside in a wagon and, depending upon what the occasion demanded, he could deliver a sermon, a political address or an ardent spiel in offering his books to whoever might appear to listen to his argument.

He was a canny man, and in a sense, as he traveled around in his wagon, he would conduct what might be called today market research; and he early perceived, even before Washington died, a tremendous market for a small, inexpensive volume which might bear some relevance to the life of this great man. For several years, he wrote a major publisher in Philadelphia, Matthew Carey, urging upon him the financial desirability of issuing such publications. Finally, in 1800, on his own initiative, Parson Weems produced a small, eighty-page booklet on Washington; subsequently, he added to it and by 1808, when the final version had been developed, it ran to some two hundred pages.

It was an enormous success. By 1808, it had already gone through several editions in the earlier form; subsequently, it was to go through some eighty editions. It’s quite clear Weems had two ideas in mind—it’s a little difficult to know which was uppermost. One idea was that of making money; the second idea was to inculcate moral precepts in the young, and he saw that he might be able to hang these moral precepts on the great heroic figure of George Washington. The results of his efforts was the George Washington of the cherry tree.

He tells us, of course, many highly dubious and even improbable anecdotes about Washington. He tells us, for example, that Washington was so beloved by his schoolmates that when he left school the other boys wept. In describing the virtues of Washington, he tells us “He was never guilty of so brutish a practice as that of fighting himself, nor would he, when able to prevent it, allow them to fight one another; if he could not disarm their savage passions by his argument, he would instantly go to the master and inform him of their barbarous intentions.” That sounds like a tattletale. The boys, on occasion, would be angry with George; we can perhaps see why, but he would say—and I quote “Angry or not angry, you shall never, boys, have my consent to a practice so shocking, shocking even in slaves and dogs, then how utterly scandalous that little boys at school who ought to look on one another as brothers.”

Now, Weems’ picture was, in many respects, admirable to many generations of youngsters who were brought up on his versions of George Washington. But does Washington’s reputation really have to be based upon such legendary accounts? And I
think we must also ask, can we genuinely expect today’s youngsters, who seem to possess a sophistication that earlier generations lacked, to take in all seriousness Parson Weems’ version of the somewhat priggish Washington?

A somewhat different image of Washington as a hero was projected by his first official biographer, Justice John Marshall. He, together with Bushrod Washington, undertook a definitive life of Washington. Ultimately, it ran to five volumes at the time of its publication in 1807. It was definitive; it was also extraordinarily dull. You got through the whole first volume and Washington had not yet appeared. It was necessary, Justice Marshall felt, to set the background. One wonders how many people ever got through that first volume and into the final four. Throughout, Washington, as a personal figure, Washington as a private man, remains very much in the background, and through the pages stalks the rather austere figure as portrayed by Gilbert Stuart, a figure who is not a man but a monument. Others, of course, were to take up the task and as the anniversary of Washington’s birth approached in 1832, an additional stimulus was given to the production of works on Washington.

One of the great earlier scholars who entered the scene at this time was the president of Harvard, Jared Sparks, and he produced, between 1834 and 1837, twelve volumes of the writings of George Washington. Sparks approached his editorial labors with a heroic concept of Washington in mind and with a feeling that somehow he had a precious responsibility to elevate further the heroic and—one might almost add in the same breath—the unhuman qualities of Washington. And accordingly, in his editorial works, he engaged in the most extensive kinds of mutilation; he corrected Washington’s spelling, because, of course, a hero must know how to spell. When, on occasion, Washington used what Jared Sparks deemed infelicitous expressions, he translated them into language more appropriate to the Victorian era. Perhaps Sparks did not have full confidence in Washington’s heroic qualities and reasoned that he must polish Washington to make him the most perfect kind of hero.

Washington Irving, after nearly thirty years of planning and research, produced a magnificent literary biography in five volumes in 1859. It was too literary; it was too formidable and did nothing to modify the popular conception of Washington as a remote, austere, dignified figure who was very difficult to translate into human terms.

To move along, by the nineteen twenties, we entered into the era of the debunkers and men like Rupert Hughes and William E. Woodward set to work on Washington, and it was very easy to disprove the nonsense that had been perpetuated by Parson Weems and to point out the unfortunate editorial tactics of Jared Sparks and to suggest there were other dimensions to Washington that previous writers, for one reason or another, obscured, neglected or suppressed. The result, of course, was a great outbreak of alarm on the part of many concerned citizens who felt that Washington, in his heroic image, should not be tampered with and that it was entirely proper that we should continue to regard him in his legendary dimension.

At the same time, people were engaging in all kinds of special studies of Washington — Washington as a farmer; Washington as a businessman; Washington as a surveyor — one venturesome author even published a book called Washington as a human being.
Then, in the nineteen thirties, we had the issuance of the great bicentennial edition of the writings of George Washington. Now, at last, the record available to scholars approached its fullness. With what we must now assume to be most of the evidence in, Douglas Southall Freeman undertook a definitive reexamination of the career of his fellow Virginian. Freeman tells us that as he began his work, he had fears, so much had been made of the heroic and legendary qualities of Washington, that Freeman rather anticipated that as he approached the evidence subjectively, the high regard that he had always held for Washington might somehow be diminished; that he might discover this great man, like all mortals, had feet of clay. But when he concluded his study—and it was indeed a rigorous study — he discovered, if not to his surprise, at least to his relief, that his respect for Washington as a man, his reverence for Washington and for his contribution to the founding of the nation, were in no way diminished; indeed, they had been greatly enhanced.

The picture of the heroic Washington has altered from era to era, to reflect what seemed to be the dominant concern or the dominant value of a particular generation. But now, I think we have arrived at the point where we can genuinely adopt a new perspective on the heroic qualities of Washington. We are sufficiently removed in point of time; we are sufficiently educated in the terms of the historic record, so that we can place Washington in some reasonable and non-legendary position as a hero of the American nation.

In many respects, particularly in terms of contemporary values, and attitudes, Washington must seem to us today as a somewhat unlikely hero. How can one be a hero in the nineteen sixties without having a nickname? There was no nickname for George Washington, as there was to be for Old Hickory; for Father Abraham, or indeed, for Ike or Bobby.

Washington, as a heroic leader of the revolutionary cause, was not a man to deliver inspiring popular appeals. There never came from him anything to compare, in its passion and fervor, with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. We do not envision Washington standing before thousands of troops and uttering an appeal that would somehow or other strike them and inspire them and elevate them to some new pitch of enthusiasm. He was not one to engage in harangues; he had none of the qualities of the demagogue, and how can one be a hero in popular terms today without those qualities.

It is significant, I think, too, that Washington had no eccentric characteristics. Can you think, for example, of Winston Churchill without his cigar? Can you think of FDR without his tilted cigarette in a holder ? Can you visualize Napoleon without his hand in his bosom ? There was nothing eccentric about Washington. He would have been a difficult figure even for modern caricatures because of his lack of eccentricity.

Similarly, he had no glaring human weakness; no failings with which we ordinary mortals might hope to identify. There have been efforts to humanize Washington by suggesting he did have perhaps some little vices; that he liked to watch the horses race; that he had some kind of an ambiguous love affair with Sally Fairfax, or that he as he bade farewell to his officers at Fraunce’s Tavern, he was so overcome with emotion that he broke down and wept. But really, compared to other heroes that I will not deign to mention, his weaknesses were so minor as to explain the difficulty that we have had in humanizing him because it seems that part of the humanizing process involves an identification with human weakness.

It’s also, I think, interesting to recall that Washington did not inspire the American revolution. He did not play in that early movement for independence the role of a Sam Adams, or Patrick Henry. Washington did not frame the Constitution of the United States; he was not our solon; he was not our lawgiver. We can assign those roles to James Madison or James Wilson. Washington did not chart the course of the new Federal government. When we tell the story of the great policy decisions of the seventeen nineties, we talk more in terms of Hamilton and Jefferson than we do in terms of George Washington. Washington, too, lacked the spectacular military qualities of a Marlborough or Napoleon. We think of him, of course, as a military leader. But we do not think of him in the same flashing, dashing terms that we would think of a Napoleon or a Marlborough. If he lacks so many of these qualities that we might associate with the heroic in terms of our own times, in terms of our own concept of the hero, how then can we explain the enduring quality of Washington?

Each of you, I suspect, has his own Washington. To each of you there will be a key idea or perhaps a key word that best summarizes what Washington means to you. To me, the key word in my understanding of Washington and of his greatness, is the word restraint. Restraint. He was a man who lived by a code; he was a man who prized self-control; he was a man who knew the meaning of self-discipline; he was not a passionate figure like Jackson or Lincoln. He was stolid, sober, dignified, judicious — not in many respects the stuff of which heroes are made, but — and it is such an important but — for our new nation, at a peculiar and crucial time in its history, in a time of change, experiment, diversity, confusion, as we embarked upon an unchartered course of republicanism, as we endeavored to make ourselves into a nation, Washington symbolized the recognized need for national unity; for civic virtue; for stability in a period of transition. And he was able to perform those great services to the nation because of his extraordinary ability to discipline himself, to restrain himself, to live according to a code, derived essentially from the stoic virtues.

Washington, then, served the nation in a dual capacity as a leader through many years of crises. He served the nation as well, as a hero, as a symbol of the republican man with his reason dominating, with a tight control over his passions and his emotions. And the nation needed such a figure of stability at the time of its origin and the heroic quality of Washington was to be of great service to the nation as the most distinctive and most significant symbol of national unity.

What of Washington today? Within the context of my previous remarks, we can say in a sense that George Washington is dead. He was a man of his time, and for his times, he was the greatest, even the indispensable, man. If you remove the figure of Washington from the history of the period of the winning of our independence and establishment of our new nation, the entire course of events becomes incredible.

It is entirely appropriate that we should pay homage to his unrivaled contribution to the founding of our American nation. He properly ranks first among all our national heroes and he is, indeed, without any peer. But really, we cannot emulate him, neither can we demand that he be made relevant, completely relevant to our own times. It is grossly unfair to his true character to insist that the values he represented and the code by which he governed his conduct remain exemplary today. Ours is indeed a different age from his. The tides of change have continued to sweep over our nation since Washington’s era, and neither romantic nostalgia nor elusive blindness should obscure recognition of that historic reality.

Our times call for new precepts, new perceptions, new prescriptions. We shall turn in vain to Washington for counsel on the plight of our decaying cities or the means of achieving nuclear disarmament or on the eventual reconciliation of black and white America.
Washington is a glorious figure in our national heritage. He is as fine, as pure a hero, as any nation possesses. He is as real a hero as any nation can hope to possess, but he must be viewed as an historic figure and not distorted into a timeless man who, chameleon-like, takes on an aspect appropriate to the exigencies of every generation.

Thank you.