Don Higginbotham, professor of American history at the University of North Carolina, believes the establishment of a united America can possibly be attributed to Washington's actions as president. Washington wanted people to identify with the nation. That was paramount in his thinking as president. That is why he saw value in presidential proclamations: Thanksgiving messages, State of the Union speeches, statements of neutrality and so on.

As Washington saw it, the president, not Congress or the judiciary, would speak to the people and speak for the people. Another way for the people to see the president as a symbol of national unity was for him to visit in person all of the 13 states, which he did between 1789 and 1791, an unbelievably arduous undertaking 200 years ago. His Southern tour alone embraced 2,000 miles of travel.

He appointed men from every state in the union to federal office, in order to further cement those states to the union. For example, he appointed James Iredell of North Carolina to the Supreme Court, admitting that he didn't know Iredell, but that he had heard good things about him. He said that it was important, now that North Carolina had ratified the Constitution, to appoint an important North Carolinian to an important federal station.

For Washington, who was truly a unifier, his letters and public messages abound with expressions such as "Union," "Nation," "National Character" and "United People." Almost always these words were capitalized. If Washington frequently used the vocabulary of republicanism to describe the American political scene, referring to the sovereignty of the people, and the values of prudence, modesty and virtue, which he referred to once as "a republican style of living"--and saying that they were essential to good citizenship and good leadership--he also tapped into another contemporary idiom of political discourse: the state-centered language of power. It permeated his "Sentiments" and his Circular to the States, to say nothing of countless letters to state and national dignitaries. Although Washington did not share Hamilton's monarchical tendencies, the president and his secretary of the treasury shared a vocabulary of political centralization

Washington's gifts surely included drive, tenacity, single-mindedness and a vision of America, muscular and united, that few of the leading lights of his generation dared grasp. And at least one other gift: he inspired enormous trust. Not only from his countrymen, who needed a cultural symbol, but also from those who saw him up close. More important than professional skill or his human sensitivity is that the leader behaves as his followers think he should; that he look and act and sound like the leader they want.

Washington could not have elicited such feeling from the men around him had he, like other great leaders, as John Shy wrote, not believed "in himself and in the cause" of American union. "Belief is the real magic of leadership." Whatever his abilities, he could never, as a provincial, have achieved renown in the old empire in the political or military realms. Nor could he have gained recognition in other areas, for he lacked the endowments in the arts, literature or science that contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic found in colonials such as Franklin and Benjamin West.

This sidebar was adapted from a lecture given by Don Higginbotham at Columbia University on December 13, 1999.