General George Washington Quotes

In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice... I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did. {The Anas, February 1, 1800, written shortly after the death of first US president George Washington}

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. George Washington, Revolutionary War General and U.S. President

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth

His Excellency today appealed to the Officers of this Army to consider themselves as a band of brothers cemented by the justice of a common cause. -General Orders of George Washington, Valley Forge

And if his youth was obvious, the Glorious Cause was to a large degree a young man’s cause. The commander in chief of the army, George Washington, was himself only forty-three. John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, was thirty-nine, John Adams, forty, Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, younger even than the young Rhode Island general. In such times many were being cast in roles seemingly beyond their experience or capacities, and Washington had quickly judged Nathanael Greene to be “an object of confidence.

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

What...are those boxes? And why do you hold them in your hands thusly?" - General George Washington

Men may speculate as they will; they may talk of patriotism; they may draw a few examples from ancient story, of great achievements performed by its influence; but whoever builds upon it, as a sufficient Basis for conducting a long and bloody War, will find themselves deceived in the end. We must take the passions of Men as Nature has given them, and those principles as a guide which are generally the rule of Action. I do not mean to exclude altogether the Idea of Patriotism. I know it exists, and i know it has done much in the present Contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting War can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of Interest or some reward. For a time, it may, of itself push Men to Action; to bear much, to encounter difficulties; but it will not endure unassisted by Interest.

He loved to tell a story about the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen, who went to England after the war. They decided to embarrass him by putting a huge picture of General George Washington in the only outhouse that was connected to the dinner party. He goes into the outhouse and he comes out and he’s not upset at all. And they said, “Well, didn’t you see George Washington there?” “Oh, yes,” he said. “It was the perfectly appropriate place for him.” “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing to make an Englishman shit faster than the sight of General George Washington.

And let’s not forget that George Washington “loved the Indians,” according to Glenn Beck,126 never mind that he waged an annihilationist war against them. Indeed, Washington wrote to Major General John Sullivan, imploring him to “lay waste” to all Iroquois settlements, so that their lands may not be “merely overrun but destroyed.”127

AS THE GENERAL IS INFORMED, THAT NUMBERS OF FREE NEGROES ARE DESIROUS OF INLISTING, HE GIVES LEAVE TO THE RECRUITING OFFICERS TO ENTERTAIN THEM, AND PROMISES TO LAY THE MATTER BEFORE THE CONGRESS, WHO HE DOUBTS NOT WILL APPROVE OF IT. —GENERAL ORDERS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON T

Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans. The black diaspora was not just our own world but, in so many ways, the Western world itself. Now, the heirs of those Virginia planters could never directly acknowledge this legacy or reckon with its power. And so that beauty that Malcolm pledged us to protect, black beauty, was never celebrated in movies, in television, or in the textbooks I’d seen as a child. Everyone of any import, from Jesus to George Washington, was white. This was why your grandparents banned Tarzan and the Lone Ranger and toys with white faces from the house. They were rebelling against the history books that spoke of black people only as sentimental “firsts”—first black five-star general, first black congressman, first black mayor—always presented in the bemused manner of a category of Trivial Pursuit. Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when—only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white,” and so Tolstoy “mattered,” like everything else that was white “mattered.” And this view of things was connected to the fear that passed through the generations, to the sense of dispossession. We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded the same respect as those that built the West. Would it not be better, then, if our bodies were civilized, improved, and put to some legitimate Christian use?

Neyse ki, zamanında altına oturup huzurla pipo tüttürdüğü Kral George'un kırmızı suratlı resmini tanımıştı; ancak o bile bir başka görünüyordu. Kırmızı ceketi maviye ve deve tüyü renge dönmüş, elinde tuttuğu kraliyet asası kılıç oluvermiş, kafasına üç köşeli şapka takılmıştı; ve altına büyük harflerle şöyle yazılmıştı: GENERAL WASHINGTON.

Having been established by George Washington under the direction of the first Attorney General, the U.S. Marshals Service was filled with notable characters of the past such as the Earp Brothers—Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil.  Others included Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok, along with Bass Reeves who was the first black man to hold this prestigious position.

Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times). He wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government. In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. Beard applied this general idea to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department. Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds. Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups. He wanted to make it clear that he did not think the Constitution was written merely to benefit the Founding Fathers personally, although one could not ignore the $150,000 fortune of Benjamin Franklin, the connections of Alexander Hamilton to wealthy interests through his father-in-law and brother-in-law, the great slave plantations of James Madison, the enormous landholdings of George Washington. Rather, it was to benefit the groups the Founders represented, the “economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience.

The two little girls and I crossed the Delaware River where George Washington had crossed it, the next morning. We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

King George III, who had made the monumental mistake of learning English, was very much the head of the war party, and so, more in anger than in sorrow, he dropped the mask of Mr. Nice Guy. He would now use his Indians, some thirty thousand German soldiers, mostly from Hesse, a Rhineland province bordering his family’s Hanoverian place of origin. The Hessians turned out to be more generally effective than the American or, indeed, the British troops. They were also considered uncommonly attractive by American girls, who found the homegrown lads a bit on the scrawny, sallow side, later to be caricatured as “Uncle Sam.” By the end of the Revolution, a great many Hessians had married American girls and settled down as contented farmers in the German sections of Pennsylvania and Delaware, their lubricious descendants to this day magically peopling the novels of Mr. John Updike.

After Harvard, J.Q.A. listlessly tried the law. But he found his true métier as a polemicist. Under various newspaper pseudonyms, he supported George Washington’s general policy of neutrality in regard to other nations. Washington’s celebrated—and long ignored—farewell to the nation, warning against passionate friendships and enmities with foreign powers, was influenced by letters that he (and Alexander Hamilton) had read from J.Q.A., whom he had made minister to The Hague.

Washington's Farewell Address consists of a series of warnings about the danger of disunion. The North and the South, the East and the West, ought not to consider their interests separate or competing, Washington urged, "your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty." Parties, he warned, were the "worst enemy" of every government, agitating "the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms," kindling "the animosity of one part against another," and even fomenting "riot and insurrection". As to the size of the Republic, "Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it." The American experiment must go on. But it could only thrive if the citizens were supported by religion and morality, and if they were well educated. "Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," he urged. "In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that the public opinion should be enlightened.

But perhaps we see a different set of sins in our own time: a reluctance to take on any new Great National Projects, a general self-indulgence, a culture built on consumption, whole generations raised in an environment where dreams are purchased at the mall. If we could somehow select the virtues of early Americans from amid their failings, we might choose their optimism, their endurance, their inventiveness, their willingness to do something big and difficult--like dig a canal across the mountains or build a new kind of road on rails. These people took on challenges that a more sober and settled population might consider too ambitious, if not downright insane.

HOW GOOD A GENERAL WAS GEORGE WASHINGTON? IF WE CONSULT the statistics as they might have been kept if he had been a boxer or a quarterback, the figures are not encouraging. In seven years of fighting the British, from 1775 to 1782, he won only three clear-cut victories—at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. In seven other encounters—Long Island, Harlem Heights, White Plains, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth—he either was defeated or at best could claim a draw. He never won a major battle. Trenton was essentially a raid, Princeton was little more than a large skirmish, and Yorktown was a siege in which the blockading French fleet was an essential component of the victory.

On September 2, the day the Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated George McClellan for president, news flashed across the country of the fall of Atlanta to General William Tecumseh Sherman after a long siege. Just as the Democrats met to declare the war a failure and crafted a platform that would lead to a negotiated Confederate independence of some kind, Sherman famously sent a telegram to Washington: “Atlanta is ours and fairly won.” Confederates’ rising hopes plummeted, and many war-weary Northerners, represented by the famous New York diarist George Templeton Strong, saw victory now on the immediate horizon: “Glorious news this morning—Atlanta taken at last!!! It is . . . the greatest event of the war.”45 The Democrats’ peace platform put Lincoln’s apparent moderation in a different light; and Douglass had seen a devotion in the president’s heart and mind

The essence of this argument is: When you think, you think of something; when you use a name, it must be the name of something. Therefore both thought and language require objects outside themselves. And since you can think of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as at another, whatever can be thought of or spoken of must exist at all times. Consequently there can be no change, since change consists in things coming into being or ceasing to be. This is the first example in philosophy of an argument from thought and language to the world at large. It cannot of course be accepted as valid, but it is worth while to see what element of truth it contains. We can put the argument in this way: if language is not just nonsense, words must mean something, and in general they must not mean just other words, but something that is there whether we talk of it or not. Suppose, for example, that you talk of George Washington. Unless

No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, “Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere …” And yet he was accused of treason—betraying his country—the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct?

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words “TRAITOR & TREASON.” Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason!

Thomas A. Edison told his associates that "Carver is worth a fortune" and backed up his statement by offering to employ the black chemist at an astronomically high salary. Carver turned down the offer. Henry Ford, who thought Carver "the greatest scientist living," tried to get him to come to his River Rouge establishment, with an equal lack of success. Because of the strangely unaccountable source from which his magic with plant products sprang, his methods continued to be as wholly inscrutable as Burbank's to scientists and to the general public. Visitors finding Carver puttering at his workbench amid a confusing clutter of molds, soils, plants, and insects were baffled by the utter and, to many of them, meaningless simpFcity of his replies to their persistent pleas for him to reveal his secrets. To one puzzled interlocutor he said: "The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough." "But why do so few people have your power?" the man persisted. "Who besides you can do these things?" "Everyone can," said Carver, "if only they believe it.

George Washington clearly shared the foundational Virginian concern to “Christianize the savages” dwelling in the Virginia Colony. On July 10, 1789, in response to an address from the directors of the Society of The United Brethren for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen, Washington stated: In proportion as the general Government of the United States shall acquire strength by duration, it is probable they may have it in their power to extend a salutary influence to the Aborigines in the extremities of their Territory. In the meantime, it will be a desirable thing for the protection of the Union to co-operate, as far as circumstances may conveniently admit, with the disinterested [unselfish] endeavours of your Society to civilize and Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness.28 A Deist, by definition, rejected Christianity and accepted the equivalence of all religions’ worship of God. So no Deist could see the plan for the “conversion of the heathen” outlined by Bishop Ettwein and the Brethren as both “laudable” and “earnestly desired.” Yet those are Washington’s words.

IN THE PAST, when dying was typically a more precipitous process, we did not have to think about a question like this. Though some diseases and conditions had a drawn-out natural history—tuberculosis is the classic example—without the intervention of modern medicine, with its scans to diagnose problems early and its treatments to extend life, the interval between recognizing that you had a life-threatening ailment and dying was commonly a matter of days or weeks. Consider how our presidents died before the modern era. George Washington developed a throat infection at home on December 13, 1799, that killed him by the next evening. John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson all succumbed to strokes and died within two days. Rutherford Hayes had a heart attack and died three days later. Others did have a longer course: James Monroe and Andrew Jackson died from progressive and far longer-lasting (and highly dreaded) tubercular consumption. Ulysses Grant’s oral cancer took a year to kill him. But, as end-of-life researcher Joanne Lynn has observed, people generally experienced life-threatening illness the way they experienced bad weather—as something that struck with little warning. And you either got through it or you didn’t.

José Martí, born on January 28, 1853, is known as the George Washington of Cuba, or is perhaps better identified with Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. Although he admired and visited the United States, José Martí realized that not only would he have to free his country from Spain, he would also have to prevent the United States from interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs. By his admirers, he was considered a great Latin American intellectual, and his newspaper Patria became the voice of “Cuban Independence.” After years of suppression, the Cuban struggle for independence began in 1868. At the age of 17, José Martí was jailed in Cuba and then exiled to Spain because of his revolutionary activities. It was during this time in his life that he published a pamphlet describing the atrocities he had experienced while being imprisoned in Cuba. He strongly believed in racial equality and denounced the horrors of people having to live under a dictatorship. In 1878, Martí was allowed to return to Cuba under a general amnesty, but was once again banished from Cuba after being accused of conspiracy against the Spanish authorities. From 1881 to 1895, he lived and worked in New York City. Moving to Florida, he organized forces for a three-pronged attack supporting the smoldering Cuban War of Independence. It was during one of the first battles that he was killed at the Battle of Dos Ríos in Cuba, and thus became a national hero and martyr when he was only 42 years old.

Another aspect of behavior directly impacted by the removal of religious principles was morality. Recall that both George Washington and Fisher Ames had warned that neither national morality in general nor student morality in particular could be maintained apart from religious principles. Statistics now verify the accuracy of their warnings. For example, following the 1962-1963 court-ordered removal of religious principles from students, teenage pregnancies immediately soared over 700 percent,52 with the United States recording the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world.53 Similarly, sexual activity among fifteen year-olds skyrocketed,54 and sexually transmitted diseases among students ascended to previously unrecorded levels.55 In fact, virtually every moral measurement kept by federal cabinet-level agencies reflects the same statistical pattern: the removal of religious principles from the public sphere was accompanied by a corresponding decline in public morality.56

Brother George Washington's favorite breakfast was "hoe cakes." Similar to today's pancakes, they were so named because they could be fried on the back of a common garden tool, a flat hoe.  The General preferred to eat his serving "liberally drizzled with butter and honey.

As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey: “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” In the age of our Founders, this human impulse to demand the right of co-creating shared wisdom accounted for the ferocity with which the states demanded protection for free access to the printing press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. General George Washington, in a speech to officers of the army in 1783, said, “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” But the twentieth century brought its own bitter lessons. The new and incredibly powerful electronic media that began to replace the printing press—first radio and film and then television—were used to indoctrinate millions of Germans, Austrians, Italians, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and others with elaborate abstract ideologies that made many of them deaf, blind, and numb to the systematic leading of tens of millions of their fellow human beings “to the slaughter.

The war with Mexico fiercely divided the American people. While the majority supported the war, a loud minority despised it, and their rancor filled the newspapers and the debates in the houses of Congress. A newly elected congressional representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, declared: ‘The war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.’ Lincoln challenged Polk on the issue that American blood had been shed on American soil and implied that the American troops were the aggressors. He charged that Polk desired ‘military glory … that serpent’s eye which charms to destroy … I more than suspect that Polk is deeply conscious of being in the wrong and that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.’ However, like many critics of the war, Lincoln voted for an appropriations bill to support military operations. An Illinois newspaper responded to Lincoln’s fulminations by branding him a ‘second Benedict Arnold,’ and Lincoln was defeated for reelection. Comparing Lincoln to Arnold was perhaps the most vicious charge that could then be made against an American. General Arnold has been a trusted favorite of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In August 1780 he had turned traitor and attempted to turn over the American army’s position at West Point to the British in exchange for money and a brigadier’s commission in the British army. His act of treachery was discovered but he was able to escape to safety behind British lines. Henry Clay, a former senator from Kentucky and unsuccessful candidate for president, often called the ‘Great Pacificator’ or the ‘Great Compromiser’ for his efforts to hold the Union together, spoke out forcefully: ‘The Mexican war,’ he said, ‘is one of unnecessary and offensive aggression … Mexico is defending her firesides, her castles, and her altars, not we.’ Representative

It is needless to be more explicit on this Subject; I am persuaded of your Excellencys Goodness. I receive the greatest Attention from his Excellency General Washington and from every person under

In 1976, to rank George Washington above all other U.S. officers, Congress gave him the posthumous promotion of “General of the Armies of the United States,” a grade equivalent to a six-star general.

Arnolds’ names should come up in conversation that summer. Benedict’s family was established just across the border in Connecticut, and the former Miss Shippen—whose own family was extremely well connected—had been acquainted with many of the officers now in New York. Benedict Arnold’s name might have even been something of a joke, at first, among the British. Here was an overly eager merchant–turned–major general who seemed

submit reports written in invisible ink, which now fell almost exclusively on Tallmadge to reveal and decipher. The job had previously belonged to Washington’s aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton, while Tallmadge was in charge of making sense of the general intelligence and summary reports Woodhull, Roe, and Brewster compiled. But recently Tallmadge had been tasked with the white-ink letters—perhaps after Washington recognized the urgency of the

execution of Nathan Hale on September 22, 1776, was the lowest point in a month of low points for General George Washington. First, the British had taken New York City and Long Island—the cornerstones of Washington’s strategy because of their valuable geographic

pride that incident had delivered may have prompted him to plan an aggressive response simply to prove he would not be made the fool. The increase of activity in mid-September was definitely new, though, after a relatively quiet August. Woodhull had written to Tallmadge on September 1: “In regard of the state of affairs in general he [Culper Junior] assured the express they remained as heretofore or as

day André set out northward with the goal of reaching HMS Vulture, a fourteen-gun sloop docked near Teller’s Point, by evening. Because it was a British ship, he arrived not as “John Anderson, Patriot merchant” but as himself, bearing letters from General Clinton that

THE FIRST DEMOCRAT The real founder of the modern Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson. Jackson, an orphan from Appalachia, rose from obscurity to become America’s most celebrated general and military hero after George Washington. He won the presidency by a landslide in 1828 and an even bigger one in 1832. His proteges dominated the Democratic Party for half a century, until the Civil War. During his lifetime Jackson was immensely popular with ordinary people, earning him the reputation of being the common man’s president. One might expect the Democrats—who even today purport to be the party of the common man—to embrace Jackson and acknowledge his paternity of their party. This, however, is not the case. So why do they distance themselves from Jackson? Why do progressives consider him such an embarrassment? Not only do many on the Left refuse to acknowledge Jackson’s founding role in the Democratic Party, they also want to kick him off the $20 bill where his face currently appears. Progressives want to see him replaced on the currency with the woman who ran the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman. To some degree, the progressive objective seems clear. Jackson, after all, owned some three hundred slaves during his lifetime. At one time he ran a plantation that had 150 slaves. So Jackson’s expulsion seems consistent with the general progressive antipathy toward slavery. The same antipathy explains the choice of Tubman, who was a female abolitionist. Moreover, Tubman was a woman. If the Democrats are going to place a woman, Hillary, on the presidential ticket, why not also have a woman, Tubman, on the currency? Even so, the proposal is interesting because Jackson was a Democrat—the founding father of the Democratic Party—while Tubman was a Republican. Admittedly progressives have no intention of highlighting that fact about Tubman; indeed it goes virtually unmentioned in the news reports. The progressive media is not comfortable with a female black abolitionist representing the Republican Party while a white male slave owner represents the Democratic Party.

library period, the army guy with the wig said that he was George Washington. After a while, we started calling him George Washington. “General Washington,” I asked, “may I go to the bathroom?” Everybody laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny. Kids think anything to do with bathrooms is funny.

Así se cerró el proceso de independencia de todo un continente. Comenzó medio siglo atrás, cuando los norteamericanos iniciaron la guerra contra los ingleses el 19 de abril de 1775, en el episodio trágico del campo comunal de Lexington, donde perecieron siete hombres. George Washington fue el primer gran general; Bolívar y Sucre, los del épico corte final glorioso. ¿Cuántos perecieron en aquel lapso de media centuria en pro de la libertad? La cifra se ha hecho subir a seiscientos mil. De éstos buena parte propició la permanencia del pasado monárquico y la vigencia de la fórmula colonial para América.

In the United States the fate of veterans was also fraught with problems. In 1918, when they returned home from the battlefields of France and Flanders, they had been welcomed as national heroes, just as the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are today. In 1924 Congress voted to award them a bonus of $1.25 for each day they had served overseas, but disbursement was postponed until 1945. By 1932 the nation was in the middle of the Great Depression, and in May of that year about fifteen thousand unemployed and penniless veterans camped on the Mall in Washington DC to petition for immediate payment of their bonuses. The Senate defeated the bill to move up disbursement by a vote of sixty-two to eighteen. A month later President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans’ encampment. Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the troops, supported by six tanks. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower was the liaison with the Washington police, and Major George Patton was in charge of the cavalry. Soldiers with fixed bayonets charged, hurling tear gas into the crowd of veterans. The next morning the Mall was deserted and the camp was in flames.7 The veterans never received their pensions.

computers.” “Computers?” George Washington said, his forehead all wrinkly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady. This is the year 1790. Computers haven’t been invented yet.” No matter what we said, the army guy with the wig insisted that he was really George Washington. He read us a story about when he was a boy and he chopped down a cherry tree. Then he showed us a bunch of books about the United States. All through library period, the army guy with the wig said that he was George Washington. After a while, we started calling him George Washington. “General Washington,” I asked, “may I go to the bathroom?” Everybody laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny. Kids think anything to do with bathrooms is funny. If you want to make your friends laugh, all you have to do is stick your face in their face and say either “bathroom” or “underwear.” It works every time. “I’m sorry,” George Washington said. “This is the year 1790. Bathrooms have not been invented yet.” It wasn’t an emergency or anything, so I waited. We were allowed to check out any book we wanted from the library. I took out a book about jet fighter planes because it had cool pictures in it. For

But that in regard to General [George] Washington, [George III] told him since his resignation that in his opinion "that act closing and finishing what had gone before and viewed in connection with it, placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living, and that he thought him the greatest character of the age.

But that in regard to General [George] Washington, [King George III] told him since his resignation that in his opinion "that act closing and finishing what had gone before and viewed in connection with it, placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living, and that he thought him the greatest character of the age.

By 1932 the nation was in the middle of the Great Depression, and in May of that year about fifteen thousand unemployed and penniless veterans camped on the Mall in Washington DC to petition for immediate payment of their bonuses. The Senate defeated the bill to move up disbursement by a vote of sixty-two to eighteen. A month later President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans’ encampment. Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the troops, supported by six tanks. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower was the liaison with the Washington police, and Major George Patton was in charge of the cavalry. Soldiers with fixed bayonets charged, hurling tear gas into the crowd of veterans. The next morning the Mall was deserted and the camp was in flames.7 The veterans never received their pensions.

(Asked to explain the defeat, Adams put it succinctly: “In general, our Generals were out generalled.”) Washington

Known as "Ike,” Eisenhower was born prior to the Spanish American War on October 14, 1890. Graduating from West Point Military Academy in 1915, he served under a number of talented generals including John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Although for the greatest time he held the rank of Major, he was quickly promoted to the rank of a five star general during World War II. During this war he served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Eisenhower was responsible for organizing the invasion of North Africa and later in 1944, the invasion of Normandy, France and Germany. Following World War II, influential citizens and politicians from both political parties urged Eisenhower to run for president. Becoming a Republican, the popular general was elected and became the 34th President of the United States. Using the slogan “I like Ike!” he served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Having witnessed the construction of the German Autobahn, one of lasting achievements we still use is the Interstate Highway System, authorized in 1956. ] He reasoned that our cities would be targets in a future war; therefore the Interstate highways would help evacuate them and allow the military greater flexibility in their maneuvers. Along with many other accomplishments during his administration, on January 3, 1959 Alaska became the 49th state and on August 21, 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state. On March 28, 1969, at 79 years of age, Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. He was laid to rest on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Eisenhower is buried alongside his son Doud, who died at age 3 in 1921. His wife Mamie was later buried next to him after her death on November 1, 1979.

On the first day of the meeting that would become known as the United States Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph of Virginia kicked off the proceedings. Addressing his great fellow Virginian General George Washington, victorious hero of the War of Independence, who sat in the chair, Randolph hoped to convince delegates sent by seven, so far, of the thirteen states, with more on the way, to abandon the confederation formed by the states that had sent them—the union that had declared American independence from England and won the war—and to replace it with another form of government. “Our chief danger,” Randolph announced, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” This was in May of 1787, in Philadelphia, in the same ground-floor room of the Pennsylvania State House, borrowed from the Pennsylvania assembly, where in 1776 the Continental Congress had declared independence. Others in the room already agreed with Randolph: James Madison, also of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; Gouverneur Morris of New York and Pennsylvania; Alexander Hamilton of New York; Washington. They wanted the convention to institute a national government. As we know, their effort was a success. We often say the confederation was a weak government, the national government stronger. But the more important difference has to do with whom those governments acted on. The confederation acted on thirteen state legislatures. The nation would act on all American citizens, throughout all the states. That would be a mighty change. To persuade his fellow delegates to make it, Randolph was reeling off a list of what he said were potentially fatal problems, urgently in need, he said, of immediate repair. He reiterated what he called the chief threat to the country. “None of the constitutions”—he meant those of the states’ governments—“have provided sufficient checks against the democracy.” The term “democracy” could mean different things, sometimes even contradictory things, in 1787. People used it to mean “the mob,” which historians today would call “the crowd,” a movement of people denied other access to power, involving protest, riot, what recently has been called occupation, and often violence against people and property. But sometimes “democracy” just meant assertive lawmaking by a legislative body staffed by gentlemen highly sensitive to the desires of their genteel constituents. Men who condemned the working-class mob as a democracy sometimes prided themselves on being “democratical” in their own representative bodies. What Randolph meant that morning by “democracy” is clear. When he said “our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions,” and “none of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy,” he was speaking in a context of social and economic turmoil, pervading all thirteen states, which the other delegates were not only aware of but also had good reason to be urgently worried about. So familiar was the problem that Randolph would barely have had to explain it, and he didn’t explain it in detail. Yet he did say things whose context everyone there would already have understood.

[Jacob] Hamblin arranged to make a trip across the Colorado River in search of a child who might be missing. The motive behind this is clear… [I]n letters and in recorded speeches he had expressed an eagerness to labor among “the nobler branches of the race.” He had heard that the Hopis across the Colorado were a peaceful, agricultural people who had many skills… Thus, while his letters to Brigham Young and George A. Smith speak of this as a bona fide “mission” for the church, the records in the General Accounting Office in Washington D.C., show that he was paid $318 for expenses incurred while conducting a search for the purpose of finding a child, [al]though Jacob Hamblin knew well that no child had ever been in the hands of the Indians…

In venous blood fibrin amounts to three in one thousand parts. When the molecules of Kali mur fall below the standard, the blood fibrin thickens, causing what is known as pleurisy, pneumonia, catarrh, diphtheria, etc. When the circulation fails to throw out the thickened fibrin via the glands or mucous membrane, it may stop the action o^ the heart. Embolus is a Latin word meaning little lump, or balls; therefore to die of embolus or “heart failure” generally means that the heart’s action was stopped by little lumps of fibrin clogging the auricles and ventricles of the heart.

The punishment of high treason in general is very solemn and terrible. (1) That the offender be drawn to the gallows…. (2) That he be hanged by the neck, and then cut down alive. (3) That his entrails be taken out and burned, while he is yet alive. (4) That his head be cut off. (5) That his body be divided into four parts. (6) That his head and quarters be at the King’s disposal.”184

Writing to Gov. Nicholas Cooke on October 12, 1776, he explained, The Advantages arising from a judicious appointment of Officers, and the fatal consequences that result from the want of them, are too obvious to require Arguments to prove them; I shall, therefore, beg leave to add only, that as the well doing, nay the very existence of every Army, to any profitable purposes, depend upon it, that too much regard cannot be had to the choosing of Men of Merit and such as are, not only under the influence of a warm attachment to their Country, but who also possess sentiments of principles of the strictest honor. Men of this Character, are fit for Office, and will use their best endeavours to introduce that discipline and subordination, which are essential to good order, and inspire that Confidence in the Men, which alone can give success to the interesting and important contest in which we are engaged. 50 Washington consistently underscored his view of the “immense consequence” of having “men of the most respectable characters” as the officers surrounding the commanderin chief. He wrote years later to Secretary of War, James McHenry as a new army was being contemplated to address the post-French Revolutionary government: To remark to a Military Man how all important the General Staff of an Army is to its well being, and how essential consequently to the Commander in Chief, seems to be unnecessary; and yet a good choice is of such immense consequence, that I must be allowed to explain myself. The Inspector General, Quartermaster General, Adjutant General, and Officer commanding the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers, ought to be men of the most respectable characters, and of first rate abilities; because, from the nature of their respective Offices, and from their being always about the Commander in Chief who is obliged to entrust many things to them confidentially, scarcely any movement can take place without their knowledge. It follows then, that besides possessing the qualifications just mentioned, they ought to have those of Integrity and prudence in

Who are you?" [Bryce] asked in a hoarse whisper "Nathaniel Gorham." The man waited, expectantly, then his face fell. "You don't recognize it?" Bryce could do no more than shake his head. "Figures. If I'd said George Washington or Benjamin Franklin then you would have perked up. But Nathaniel Gorham? No... My name's right there next to theirs... At the bottom of the Constitution. Big as life, just like Ben's and General Washington's.

Near our old apartment in Auburn, there is a trail of trees called the George Bengtson Historic Tree Trail, named after a white research forester and plant physiologist at the University of Auburn, Alabama. A great man, I’m sure. These trees are grafted from scions of heritage trees. Among the trees planted: Lewis & Clark Osage Orange. Trail of Tears Water Oak. General Jackson Black Walnut. General Robert E. Lee Sweetgum. Southern Baldcypress. Johnny Appleseed Apple Tree. Mark Twain Bur Oak. Lewis & Clark Cottonwood. Helen Keller Southern Magnolia. Amelia Earhart Sugar Maple. Chief Logan American Elm. Lincoln’s Tomb White Oak. John F. Kennedy Crabapple. John James Audubon Japanese Magnolia. No trees are named for Muskogee, the First People who died in the millions during epidemics, displacement, and land raids. Under the buildings and homes and replanted forests are remnants of Muskogee earthwork mounds, temples, and trenches, a complex network of pre-American cities. There is a single scion named for a northern Indian Iroquois, Chief Logan, another for the Trail of Tears, the only nod to the suffering of Indigenous people. There is no mention of Sacajawea, never mind that Lewis and Clark would’ve been lost in the American wilderness without her. George Washington Carver Green Ash is the only scion named after the Black inventor and scientist. No Black or Native women or femmes are named. No mention of a single civil rights leader, which Alabama birthed aplenty: Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Angela Y. Davis. Imagine a Zora Neale Hurston Sweetgum or a Margaret Walker Poplar.

Midshipman Edward Pellew was in the British boat right behind Arnold's. The American general had escaped, but in his haste he had left behind his stock and buckle, which Pellew took as a keepsake. Years later, by which time Pellew had become the much-decorated admiral Viscount Exmouth, he could not help but wonder how differently the War of Independence might have turned out if on that cold autumn day near the southern tip of Lake Champlain he had captured Benedict Arnold.

Many southerners feared that the New Englanders were a rash, obstinate people, prone to extremism, and worried that an army led by a New England general might someday turn despotic and conquer the South. The appointment of George Washington would soothe such fears and form a perfect political compromise between North and South.

You have to give people who are new to this movement and to activism in general some way in.” For some people, that’s going to a protest, or seeing a documentary, or reading a book, that gets them thinking, “Maybe I can do something.” And so no, I don’t believe one person’s vote amounts to shit. But it can get people in the mindset of recognizing they can fight back against the Powers That Be in some way. Maybe next time, that leads them down the path of, they’ll join an organization or they’ll talk to their friends about the murders, or that George Washington had slaves, and how this country only exists because of slavery.

Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions, by letting into the government, principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement and banishment by acts of legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.

Independence. It was a scene at Valley Forge—amply recreated in paintings, drawings and popular media—of George Washington, the general of the American army, a bowed man whose shoulders carried the burdens of freedom through that grist–mill of defeat and deprivation, dropping to his knees in final desperation to lay his petition for relief before God. Potts saw Washington kneeling in the snow, in private prayer.

Con capitales obtenidos de este tráfico de esclavos, los hermanos Brown, de Providence, instalaron el horno de fundición que proveyó de cañones al general George Washington para la guerra de la independencia43.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. Address to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island, 27 August 1776

In November, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Chiao Kuan-hua, delivered a speech to the United Nations that Bush thought “was clearly hostile to the United States, referring to us as bullies etc.” American officials were under strict orders not to reply except in warm generalities, but Bush, still stung by the Taiwan defeat and thinking of domestic U.S. opinion, argued for a stronger response. “If we appear to be pushed around by Peking at every turn,” Bush said, “the whole thing can backfire on the President.” Kissinger was unmoved by Bush’s views. To Kissinger the relationship with Peking was too sensitive and too momentous to be subject to the emotions of a given moment. To have Bush making a contrary case, even internally, was infuriating. The two men met in Washington. “He started off madder than hell,” Bush recalled. “I want to treat you as I do four other ambassadors, dealing directly with you,” Kissinger said, “but if you are uncooperative I will treat you like any other ambassador.” The threat did not sit well with Bush, who pushed back. “I reacted very strongly…and told him that I damn sure had a feel for this country and I felt we had to react” to provocative Chinese rhetoric. For two or three minutes—an eternity in such circumstances—both men spoke candidly and passionately. It was, Bush thought, “a very heated” exchange. Bush insisted he was arguing out of conviction, not self-interest. “I told him very clearly when he got upset that I was not trying to screw things up, I was trying to serve the President [by defending the U.S. against the Chinese attacks] and that it was the only interest I had,” Bush recalled saying. “He ought to get that through his head. I was not trying to get any power.” After hearing Bush out, Kissinger “really cooled down.

The author distinguishes George Washington's leadership from that of another aristocratic general whose temperament was somewhat cold. Unlike him, Washington made the effort to at least appear to suffer with his troops.

Suppose it were possible to conceive that a president and council of one of the united states were the persons with whom those other means have been used—what would be the line of conduct they would probably pursue . . . ? Would it not be to divide the people by every means in their power; to lessen the reputation and consequently the weight and authority of the great council of the United States; to poison the minds of the people and prejudice them against Congress by misrepresentation of facts and publications calculated to deceive; to seize every occasion of quarreling with Congress, and endeavor to bring the other states and particularly the legislature of their own into the dispute; to labor to damn the reputation of . . . general officers of the army, not sparing those of their own state whom they cannot hope to influence, especially such as are distinguished for their spirit and bravery; and if they cannot effect their purpose to disparage their past services, pour upon them a torrent of abuse with a gentle salvo of “as it is reported and believed”; and to . . . alienate the inhabitants of their own state from the service by representing military discipline as degrading to freemen; . . . to leave the defenses of their country unguarded and unrepaired, that the enemy may meet with no opposition, in case they think proper to attack or invade it, etc.

Pick up most books and articles on Washington from 1932 or earlier, and generally, with a few exceptions, you will read about George Washington the Christian. That began to change with the iconoclastic scholarship of the mid-twentieth century that sought to tear down the traditional understanding of our nation and its origins.

God didn't give the General sons of his own. I reckon that's why He gave Washington an army - so that he could be father to us all.

Washington clearly enjoyed himself in Annapolis. He danced every dance at the governor’s ball, accommodating all the ladies who lined up for the privilege of getting a touch of him. After the thirteen formal toasts at Congress’s banquet, he added a concluding one of his own: “Competent Powers to Congress for general purposes.”59 It had become his mantra. As much as he wished to get home to Virginia, he was also at home here in the swirl of continental politics.

Six weeks before the Letelier murder, the U.S. Ambassador in Paraguay, George W. Landau (no relation to Saul Landau), received a call from a top aide of Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner who said he was relaying a request directly from Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. The aide said that he needed visas immediately for two Chilean army officers using Paraguayan passports to travel to Washington on an intelligence mission.

The secret of Washington’s ability to accomplish so much was his mastery of time management. Consider his statements on time. “What to me is more valuable, my time, that I most regard,” he wrote to James McHenry, September 14, 1799. Similarly, he wrote to James Anderson on December 10, 1799, “… time, which is of more importance than is generally imagined.

He felt that in a way he was taking part in the Revolution. He was returning the mighty general’s cape. He had been given the responsibility for keeping the father of our country from freezing! He climbed out of the boat feeling like a true rebel!

Where do you make your homes?” he asked. “Rumson,” Matt called back. “Rumson, Nebraska.” “Nebraska? Where is this place, Nebraska?” The general and his men looked perplexed, but the state of their confusion was nowhere near that of Matt and his friends. “I never met anyone who didn’t know where Nebraska was,” Hooter mumbled through chattering teeth. “Where…where do you think they’re from?” Tony stammered. “I don’t know,” matt whispered, staring at the soldiers and their muskets. “But I have this strange feeling, like…like…” “Like we’ve seen them someplace before,” Q concluded. “Where?” Hooter wanted to know. “Where have we seen them?” “In our history book,” Q whispered. “We’ve gone back in time!” “You mean before TV and stuff?” Hooter asked, looking at the old-fashioned muskets that were pointed at them. “Before TV?” Q squeaked. His voice always turned into a series of squeaks when he was excited. “Try before electricity and flashlights. Try 1776--the Revolutionary War!

A young soldier stepped into the old rowboat and reached for Matt and Q first, grabbing them by the arms and directing them over to the general’s vessel. He then tried to separate Hooter and Tony, but Hooter had pulled Tony to him and wouldn’t let go. He was holding him to his chest as if Tony were his teddy bear. Actually Hooter still slept with a teddy bear but it was a secret he had kept from his friends. Tony wasn’t furry or cuddly like his bear but Hooter wasn’t about to be choosy. He was so scared he just needed something to hold on to. “Hooter, let go! You’re squeezing me so hard I can’t breathe,” Tony cried as they were lifted together onto the general’s boat. “Sorry,” Hooter mumbled, without loosening his grip.

I’m going to put these socks on my feet,” she told him. “Katie, are you crazy?” Q cried suddenly, when he saw what she was doing. “No,” Katie answered. “His socks! Don’t you realize that those are George Washington’s socks? You can’t put them on your feet!” Q was horrified. “But my feet are cold,” Katie told him, slipping her little foot into one of the large socks. “And he gave them to me. Besides, my jeans are all wet and this sock is so big it goes all the way up my leg.” She grinned. “You can have my socks, we’ll trade,” Q offered. “Oh, no,” Katie said. “He gave them to me and I don’t have to trade if I don’t want to.” “What a waste.” Q sighed, looking over to Matt, “George Washington’s socks wasted on a girl!” “Don’t take it so hard, Q,” Matt tried to console him. “You can always try dumping yourself in the river,” Tony told him. “The general might be out of socks but who knows. Maybe he would give you his underwear.” Everyone laughed but Q. “If I was lucky enough to end up with George Washington’s underwear you can bet I wouldn’t wear them, either,” Q told him. “What would you do with them?” Hooter wanted to know. “I’d frame them,” Q said solemnly. “Are we going to stand around all way talking about George Washington’s underwear, or are we going to try and find the boat?

Whether as General, a private citizen, or as president, Washington never swerved from an expressed commitment to the Christian evangelistic mission to the Native Americans that was a legacy bequeathed to him by the very first Anglican settlers of the colony of Virginia.

THAT SPRING WASHINGTON received a letter from Lafayette, who had long since returned to France. Now that peace was looking like a certainty, he had a “wild scheme” to propose: the two of them should buy a small plantation together and “try the experiment to free the Negroes and use them only as tenants. Such an example as yours might render it a general practice.” Lafayette’s time in Virginia had given him a firsthand knowledge of the horrifying realities of southern slavery. He still loved Washington like a father, but something needed to be done to ensure that the promise of the Declaration of Independence—“liberty and justice for all”—applied to all Americans, no matter what their skin color.

Dear father of our country, so alive you must have lied incessantly to be immediate, here are your bones crossed on my breast like a rusty flintlock, a pirate's flag, bravely specific and ever so light in the misty glare of a crossing by water in winter to a shore other than that the bridge reaches for. Don't shoot until, the white of freedom glinting on your gun barrel, you see the general fear.

And in the famous picture of the 1776 crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, two men depicted at the front of the boat include Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell – two black patriots who served with George Washington and other American generals during the Revolution.

The Honorable Walter Brybe, who had won his exalted position as Attorney General of the United States because of his long and faithful service helping large corporations to circumvent the federal laws, sat at his desk in Washington, D. C.