Modern views
To many modern Americans, if they think about George Washington at all, he is either the man in the marble toga--born, as one biographer observed, fully clothed, a stiff, unknowable figure, posturing in eighteenth-century garb--or he assumes the stilted poses of Gilbert Stuart portraits. His name is evoked once a year to lend sanction to shoppers' sales on February 22, the holiday observing his birthday. ![[image]](113_1GWportrait.jpg) | | Francis G. Mayer/CORBIS | | Portrait of George Washington,by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1795-1800. |
Washington is the least known of the founding fathers. While historians have never subscribed to these simplistic views, even scholarly opinion (except for a few eighteenth-century specialists) has often leaned toward criticism of his military ability during the Revolution and toward a tendency to dismiss him during his presidency as a pawn of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in their struggle for intellectual control of the new republic. Washington's modern reputation has often been founded on the cardboard figure perpetuated by his nineteenth-century admirers. After his death, in December 1799, the funeral orations that swept the country began a perversion of a man into a national icon. Political parties vied with each other in carrying on Washington's political principles, including his views of a national character. He became a kind of man for all political seasons, and getting right with Washington was a political axiom. Throughout the century, writers concentrated on working Washington into whatever current political and cultural axioms were prevalent at the time. Gradually, a figure emerged that represented whatever was the current view of perfection. In their pursuit of high morality, the eulogizers proved, to their satisfaction, that Washington was opposed to indulgence in alcohol, profanity, dancing, card playing, the theater and hunting; in effect, they stripped him of all that he had most enjoyed in life. Further energy was drained from him by his nineteenth-century editors, who emasculated his correspondence by deleting from their volumes any words or sentiments they felt unworthy of the great man's reputation. The Patriot-King
In April 16, 1789, George Washington began his journey to New York City to assume the presidency of the new nation. It is hard for modern Americans to understand the kind of adulation he encountered everywhere along his route. At the very apex of his career, he seemed to those who saw him the very embodiment of Bolingbroke's Patriot-King, the virtuous leader of a unified nation. He even looked the part. Benjamin Rush observed that there is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by Washington's side. In a nation where the height of the average man was perhaps 5 feet 4 inches, the 6-foot-2 Washington towered over most of his contemporaries. Thomas Jefferson observed that he was the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. No other man of his time, either in America or abroad, evoked the kind of tribute that Washington did on the eve of his inaugural journey. He had acquired an immense reputation for integrity, disinterestedness and service to the state. By the end of the Revolution, his image, both in the United States and abroad, as the great man of his century was unrivaled. |
