by jacquelyn horkan, editor
"The history of our revolution will be ... that
Dr. Franklin's electric rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington." John
Adams, 1790
Today we seem left with only a shadow of
Washington's greatness. Once a year, he appears on television to sell us cars and
appliances.
Yet, more than any other man, George
Washington set the course for a young nation, born of revolution but sustained in peace.
As a 22-year-old militia man, he fired the
first shots of the French & Indian War, the contest that freed American colonists of
the yoke of British protection against France's New World aspirations.
He twice walked a path strewn with peril for
the young democracy, a path that easily could have ended in despotism.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, he was
the most powerful man in America, yet he resigned his commission and returned to the farm.
As president, he again freely relinquished command, trusting in the great American mission
to prove that humankind was good enough to govern itself without the influence of
dictators.
In 1790, George Washington received a gift
from the Marquis de Lafayette--the key to the Bastille, the infamous prison that sparked
the French Revolution, sent a token of affection to the patriarch of liberty. In return,
Washington gave the Marquis a pair of shoe buckles manufactured in Washington, D.C.
American shoe buckles or symbols of anarchy?
History proves Washington gave the better gift. |
