A Year With George Washington
April 1st
Honesty:
In the century following the death of George Washington, Americans increasingly turned to the stories concerning the life of the Father of his country as told by Parson Weems. It was he who told the tale of Washington chopping down the cherry tree and admitting it to his father when confronted. “I cannot tell a lie.” That and other stories with a moral truth inspired young people in their earliest lessons. Modern cynics who have set out to “de-mythify” the heroes of American history began their deconstruction with Weems and other contemporary historians of Washington. Attempting to prove Weems wrong (he allegedly based his stories on interviews with old people who knew Washington in his earlier years, tales unprovable by other means), they miss the point of the story that Washington was known to be an honest man by virtually every founder and signer who knew him, whatever the lack of evidence for the youthful incident.
Washington was not perfect; all men are sinners, and there are incidents in his life that indicate he was less than truthful as a young man; he also sometimes exaggerated to urge Congress to act on behalf of his starving, unpaid army. The exceptions, however, prove the rule—he self-consciously worked hard at speaking plainly and with utmost veracity, and his life was consistently characterized by honesty. As commander in chief of the army, then as President of the United States, his unquestioned integrity placed him in a position without any peers and evoked comments such as these:
“His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest, or consanguinity, or friendship, or hatred being able to bias his decision, he was in every sense of the words a wise, a good, and a great man.” (Thomas Jefferson)
“To the excellency of his virtues, I am not disposed to set any limits. All his actions were upright and all his actions, just.” (Timothy Pickering)
“The General is an honest man.” (Alexander Hamilton)
“The honestest man I believe ever adorned human nature.” (Tench Tilgman)
Washington had written to several people and, no doubt, told his wife more than once that when the war ended, he wanted nothing more than to return to Mount Vernon, live in peace, and tend to his farm. When King George III was told by the American artist Benjamin West that General Washington was going to resign and return home, the King responded by saying, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” He may have said that with some envy as well, since he himself loved gardening and was known by some peers as “farmer George.” Washington did exactly what he said he would: he resigned from the army and returned to private life. The nation, however, could not abide his absence long and elected him President after the ratification of the Constitution.
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address reveals a man thoroughly dependent upon God’s mercy and thankful for the good providences that have attended the country’s efforts in winning independence. His modest reminder that he wanted no “pecuniary compensation” to serve the people as their first President, and his wise submission to the Constitution, reflected an honest appraisal of his own dependence and a recognition of the rule of law that many Presidents of the following century quoted. Washington even went so far as to invoke the blessing of God insofar as Americans keep His eternal moral law.
Honesty : In principle, an upright disposition; moral rectitude of heart; a disposition to conform to justice and correct moral principles, in all social transactions moral law and the virtues it engenders.
“Washington . . . thought of reputation as a thing that might be destroyed or sullied—some valuable cargo carried in the hold of the self. When Knox wrote Lafayette that Washington, in going to the Constitutional Convention, had “committed” his fame “to the mercy of events” they were like two merchants discussing the risky venture of a third. The cargo was precious because reputation was held to be a true measure of one’s character—indeed, in some sense, identical to it.” (Richard Brookhiser in Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, p. 131)
“Good Sense and Honesty: These are qualities too rare and too precious, not to merit particular esteem.” (John Frederick Schroeder’s Maxims of Washington, p. 309)
“Common Sense and Common Honesty: It appears to me, that little more than common sense and common honesty, in the transactions of the community at large, would be necessary to make us a great and happy nation; for, if the general government lately adopted shall be arranged and administered in such a manner, as to acquire the full confidence of the American people, I sincerely believe that they will have greater advantages, from their natural, moral, and political circumstances, for public felicity, than any other people ever possessed.” (ibid.)
“We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps a finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” (from Washington’s First Inaugural)
