Quote of the Day (Ron Chernow, on George Washington’s ‘One Major Blunder As President’)

“Washington committed only one major blunder as president: He failed to put his name on Mount Vernon and thereby bungled an early opportunity at branding. Clearly deficient in the art of the deal, the poor man had to settle for the lowly title of father of his country.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow, “Ron Chernow Stands for Press Freedom at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” www.pen.org, April 30, 2019

This Day in Architectural History (Pierre L'Enfant, Visionary Capital Planner, Dies Lonely Death)

June 14, 1825— Major Pierre L'Enfant, an architect who designed the capital of the new American republic only to miss out on his chance for credit and compensation, died at age 70 in Prince Georges County, Md., destitute and ignored by the seat of government he had helped conceive.

A trained painter who, like the Marquis de Lafayette, left his native France in a burst of youthful idealism to join the American colonies in their fight for freedom, L'Enfant caught the attention of George Washington with his draftsmanship skills while serving in the Continental Army Corps of Engineers. He not only endured the brutal winter at Valley Forge but suffered a grievous leg wound at the Battle of Savannah and spent six months as a prisoner of war after being captured at the Battle of Charleston.

After the war, L’Enfant worked on the insignia and diploma for the Society of Cincinnati and the design for New York’s Federal Hall. In 1789, even before Congress had formally approved a capital district for the nation, L’Enfant was lobbying Washington with his proposal for creating it.

Only 11 months after obtaining his prestigious architectural commission, L’Enfant was off the project—depending on who you believe, having resigned or been fired. In a way, the manner of his departure doesn’t matter, because, following continual clashes with the three supervisory commissioners of the new federal District of Columbia, he would have been gone in just a matter of time.

Perhaps taking a cue from his adored commander in the war, Washington, L’Enfant had neither requested nor been given a salary for his work in planning the district. But, as the years went by and his income from other projects dwindled, he felt the urgent need to press his claims.

It did not help that when he had left, he had annoyed many with his egotism, his overbearing ways, and his failure to adequately communicate his vision. He had ordered the demolition of a property belonging to a prominent resident; delayed producing a map for the sale of city lots; spoke and wrote English poorly; and, when he walked away from the project in a huff, taken all the plans with him.

For his last 15 years, the unmarried and childless L’Enfant lived as a charity case on the estate of his benefactor, William Dudley Digges. Long before he was buried in an unmarked grave on the plantation, he had haunted key figures in the city he designed through rambling letters and appearances, wearing his blue Continental Army uniform, in which he fruitlessly pressed his case for proper remuneration for his work. (He wanted $95,000 for his architectural services; Congress would go no higher than $3,800.)

The fulfillment of L’Enfant’s vision for the city—and his honor for creating it—did not occur until early in the 20^th century. The centennial celebration of Washington’s founding led the McMillan Commission—a panel of architects and planners appointed by the U.S. Senate—to consider how to beautify a metropolis that had fallen victim to decentralized, private land development.

The commission members sought to adapt L’Enfant’s original scheme in the light of the “City Beautiful” movement coming into being.

At the same time, a parallel movement grew to remember L’Enfant in the fashion he craved during life. His remains were exhumed, transported in in a casket draped with the American flag to the U.S. Capitol (where he became the first foreign-born man to lie in state) before being taken by military escort to Arlington National Cemetery. There he was buried overlooking the city he had created.

Some aspects of L’Enfant’s plan, such as a waterfall flowing down Capitol Hill, never came to fruition. But others eventually were adopted, including:

*the seat of government on Capitol Hill;

*the mall connecting Capitol Hill to what he called “The President’s House” and we call the White House;

* a four-quadrant grid, with north-south and east-west streets crossed by grand diagonal avenues, creating public squares and beautiful buildings in what consisted of hills, forests, marshes and plantations.

Quote of the Day (George Washington, on Disunity and ‘Arbitrary Power’)

“It is only in our United Character, as an Empire, that our Independance is acknowledged, that our power can be regarded or our Credit supported among foreign Nations—the Treaties of the European Powers with the United States of America will have no validity on a dissolution of the Union. We shall be left nearly in a State of Nature, or we may find by our own unhappy experience, that there is a natural and necessary progression from the extreme of Anarchy to the extreme of Tyranny, and that arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to Licentiousness.”—George Washington (1732-1799), commander in chief of the Continental Army and first President of the United States, “Circular to the States,” June 8-21, 1783, on the National Archives’ “Founders Online” Website

He certainly had his faults, but George Washington has long held an honored place in this country’s history for his vision, wisdom, and integrity. 

The above quote demonstrates why, as does his example of renouncing power and returning to private life when he could easily have become a dictator.

Like many Americans, I have taken for granted that important documents like the above source from our nation’s past would not only be preserved but disseminated in digital form for all of us to ponder.

The way things are going, who knows what will be maintained anymore? Oh, you hadn’t heard that the Presidential administration that came to power in January is forcing out the top leadership at the National Archives?

This is as good a time as any to remember George Orwell’s warning about history in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Quote of the Day (George Washington, on ‘Virtue and Happiness’)

“[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since 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 as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” —President George Washington (1732-1799), “First Inaugural Address,” April 30, 1789

In New York City nearly 235 years ago, George Washington demonstrated the qualities Americans hoped for in their President.

In a New York City courtroom yesterday, a former and still-aspiring occupant of his office was found to be notably wanting in virtue and sense of duty.

It was frustrating to watch this latter individual fill that job with neither a sense of decorum nor of honesty. But maybe now, the “eternal rules of order and right” that Washington hailed will at long last begin to be vindicated.

Quote of the Day (Alexis Coe, on George Washington’s Teeth)

“At best, we can say Washington had a poacher's smile. His dentists took chunks of ivory from hippopotamuses, walruses and elephants, sculpted them down, and affixed them to dentures using brass screws.”— American presidential historian and podcast host Alexis Coe, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington (2020)

After 12 years of elementary and high school, most American kids don’t know much about George Washington. What they think they know turns out to be a good deal less, or at least more complicated, than they anticipate—and certainly in the case of three matters.

Yes, Washington owned slaves. But, as noted by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer James Thomas Flexner, he became, unlike Southern planters of his age (including Jefferson), more rather than less bothered by the so-called “peculiar institution” over time.

He not only provided in his will for his slaves’ eventual manumission, but rented most of Mount Vernon to avoid the debt that increasingly encumbered fellow plantation aristocrats and limited their ability to free their own slaves.

And yes, as commander in chief of the Continental Army, Washington crossed the Delaware River to attack British forces at Trenton.

But, as I learned in a visit to Highland, the Virginia home of another President in that crossing, James Monroe (then a junior soldier), Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s iconic 1851 painting got almost everything about that event wrong.

(Most obviously, that pose on the edge of the rowboat? It wasn’t a rowboat but a flat boat, and one strong wave would have sent Washington, leaning forward precariously in front, plunging into the river’s icy depths, never to emerge alive.)

Which brings us to the third—and dumbest—item: George’s teeth. It’s always fascinated me how endlessly and boringly fixated Americans are about his choppers. (When I visited Mount Vernon several years ago, this was among the most frequently asked questions the staff encountered.)

Gilbert Stuart’s endlessly reproduced image of the first President concentrated attention on this facial defect—even though the painter tried to downplay George’s sunken cheeks around the teeth by stuffing his mouth with cotton for what certainly must have been a long, uncomfortable portrait sitting.

As you’ll see in the image accompanying this post, the teeth were not, for sure, the kind of pearly whites that celebrities flash from the red carpet.

But it wasn’t until the 19^th century—after poor George had died—that America had its significant “firsts” in dentistry: a book on the subject published here (1801), a dentist recommending dental floss (1815), a dental school (1840), and a public demonstration of ether anesthesia (1846). So what did you expect in his time?

And another thing: while George had only one of his original teeth by the time of his death, and the dentures he did have caused him tons of discomfort, they weren’t wooden, okay? They were, as Ms. Coe notes, primarily ivory.

The rather exotic animal sources that she mentions were supplemented by gold, lead, and human teeth that Washington paid for—including those of his own slaves.

I get it that Americans want to know something about heroes like Washington (and the other great February President honored this day, Lincoln) that reveal them as human beings rather than statues, with all kinds of imperfections just like you and me. Nobody could be that good.

But I also wish kids (and yes, their parents) remember what gets lost in our time of trivia and revisionism—why Washington’s contemporaries turned to him for leadership, and why we continue to honor him:

*A lifelong commitment to learn and maintain good manners (the better to restrain a ferocious temper);

*A willingness to serve his country when called to duty;

*Sacrifices he shared with his common soldiers;

*Heeding others when they had better ideas than his own;

*Spotting and encouraging smart younger men like Alexander Hamilton;

*Telling the truth and not stealing from the public purse; and,

*Yielding power willingly, without resort to violence or corruption—virtually unheard of among world leaders at the time, and, as even Americans know all too well since January 6, 2021, not to be taken for granted even here now, as we near 250 years since Washington staked everything he had—including his life—for a new republican experiment. 

(See Adam Littlestone Luria’s excellent New York University Law Review blog post on the “stable and enduring politics” that Washington sought to create.)

This Day in Medical History (Benjamin Rush, Reforming Doctor Who Signed Declaration of Independence, Born)

Dec. 24, 1745—Benjamin Rush, a doctor at the forefront of intellectual and reform movements in the first four decades of the American republic—including signing the Declaration of Independence—was born in Byberry Township, Penn. (The date used here was according to the Julian Calendar that prevailed in England and its colonies at the time.)

Last week, I wrote a post about another underrated Founding Father: John Jay. But, in its way, Rush’s career was more varied, more interesting—and more tragic. After all, how many other figures are considered so crucial to the origins of abolitionism, prison reform, psychiatry, eugenics, and substance abuse treatment—or been forced to put many of his concepts into practice by treating his own mentally ill son?

As a member of the Continental Congress whose activities ranged across multiple fields, Rush may have been surpassed only by two friends who also signed the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. He embodied the best notions of the American Enlightenment for his belief in republicanism, toleration, scientific progress, and the elevating impact of education.

Yet, though regarded as the most famous and brilliant American physician of his time, his renown faded somewhat in the two centuries after his death for three reasons: his relatively brief political career, a longtime lack of access to his copious writings, and out-of-context misunderstandings about some of the more controversial aspects of his medical career.

In recent years, Rush has become the focus of some long-overdue scholarly attention. First, Stephen Fried’s highly acclaimed biography of the doctor appeared two years ago. Second, the current COVID-19 pandemic has led scholars to re-examine Rush’s controversial role in a major epidemic of his career: a Yellow Fever outbreak in Philadelphia.

Though not the sole physician who signed the Declaration, Rush was the only one to receive a university education in medicine (the College of Philadelphia, then the University of Edinburgh).

From his late 20s on, he became active in politics: persuading the recent English immigrant Thomas Paine to call his incendiary pro-revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense; discussing how to advance the new movement while dining at Philadelphia’s City Tavern with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington; and, after signing the Declaration, leaving his pregnant wife behind to serve as physician in chief of the military hospital of the Middle Department of the Continental Army.

In the latter frenetic period, Rush was a trusted confidante and admirer of Washington: witnessing him clutching a page saying “Victory or death” (the watchword for the attack) before crossing the Delaware at the Battle of Trenton; treating the dying Gen. Hugh Mercer at the Battle of Princeton; slipping out of the clutches of the British after being briefly captured at the Battle of Brandywine; and writing an essay on  improving soldiers’ medical care that Washington pressed on his subordinates.

But before long, Rush would also display the habit of caustic, impolitic and sometimes indiscreet writing that attracted a host of enemies. He became appalled by medical treatment of soldiers at the hands of his superior, John Shippen, then at the Continental Congress for clearing him of wrongdoing.

Rush made an even more significant enemy when he penned an anonymous letter to Patrick Henry that was critical of Washington. Henry disregarded Rush’s plea to burn the letter immediately, instead passing it along to the general. Washington was so angry at Rush’s duplicity that the doctor felt compelled to resign his post.

In the 1780s, students rather than soldiers became the primary focus of Rush’s attention. At the University of Pennsylvania, he served in a number of capacities over the years, including professor of chemistry, professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical practice. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, Rush was egalitarian in outlook, believing that a good education should be enough to qualify candidates for public office.

All the while he was lecturing to enthralled students (more than 3,000 in his 45-year career), Rush was maintaining a vigorous publication schedule (an estimated 85 significant publications, including the first American chemistry textbook) and becoming what would now be thought of as a public intellectual on health and educational matters:

* He founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (1783), Franklin College (now Franklin and Marshall) at Lancaster (1787), and the College of Physicians (also 1787);

* He sought, at Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital, to get better funding for the mentally ill, and to stop the shameful practice of warehousing them;

* He called for treating addiction as a medical problem years before this became standard practice;

* He sought to reconcile two modes of beliefs that he heartily embraced: rationalism and religion;

* He proposed a national system of public education with a federal university to train public servants; and

* He advocated for the education of women.

On top of all these efforts, Rush not only called for an end to slavery but, differing from the conventional wisdom of the time, declared that there was nothing physically different about African-Americans that would prevent them from achieving as much as whites.

Unfortunately, Rush endangered his reputation for being in the vanguard of progressive thought—not to mention his professional credibility—by his role in Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. (A thorough but critical examination of his role is provided by Robert L. North's "Benjamin Rush, MD: Assassin or Beloved Healer?" in a 2000 article for the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings.)

At the start of the epidemic, Rush’s standing with the public actually rose, as he was one of the few physicians even to stay in the city to treat patients. But no approach he tried with patients seemed to work.

At this point, recalling a 1744 medical paper, Rush hit on the expedient of bloodletting and purging. Even when that didn’t work, he only resorted to it all the more often. (Ironically, Rush had stumbled onto they key to yellow fever outbreaks—his notes refer at one point to “Moschetoes” that were “uncommonly numerous”—but he never made the connection to the disease’s origin.)

William Safire’s novel Scandalmonger (2000) takes the viewpoint of Rush’s enemies by depicting him as a "murderous quack" and "Dr. Death," but it leaves out an important bit of context: Nobody else at the time had the least idea of what caused the disease. But the damage to the esteemed doctor’s credibility was done. He felt compelled to withdraw from some of his positions, and even his practice suffered for a time.

Adams’ appointment of his old friend as Treasurer of the U.S. Mint enabled Rush to rebuild his reputation even as he re-entered public service. He remained wed, fatally, to his old idea on fever—when stricken with typhus in 1813, he instructed that he be treated through bloodletting and purging—but at his death, a grateful populace turned out en masse to pay tribute to one of Philadelphia’s most honored citizens.

In his 2018 biography, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, Stephen Fried explained how the physician-patriot’s intimate connection to the leading lights of his time led to his relative undervaluation by decades of historians. At his death, descendants of several prominent families had reason not to have his correspondence or journal entries cited by biographers--materials that would have confirmed his central in the American Revolution:

*Jefferson’s family did not want airing of his skepticism about the divinity of Christ—opinions that could have been misconstrued to suggest he was an atheist—or his request to the doctor for the best way to treat his hemorrhoids;

*Adams’ descendants were sensitive about revealing the President's anguish over a son’s descent into and death from alcoholism—a pattern that repeated itself with one of the children of John Quincy Adams; and

*Rush’s family was not keen about divulging the reason behind his disrupted friendship with George Washington, now firmly established as the Father of His Country.

Even as he struggled with the personal tragedy of his son John--a physician who, after killing a friend in a duel, became so mentally unstable he needed to be placed under his father's care-- Rush, in his last decade, performed one of his greatest services to posterity by relentlessly urging old friends Adams and Jefferson to repair the breach that had developed because of their competition for the Presidency. 

That reconciliation not only helped heal old wounds between the proud old patriots but led to one of the most extraordinary bursts of correspondents among two ex-Presidents—creating a treasure trove that scholars have used since to better understand the extraordinary generation that produced such revolutionaries as Adams, Jefferson and mutual friend Rush.

This Day in Colonial History (Washington Escapes Ambush of British in Pennsylvania Wilderness)

July 9, 1755—Marching through the thick forests of Western Pennsylvania with too few advance scouts, approximately 1,500 British troops were attacked, then defeated by an outnumbered force of 900 Indians, French, and Canadians.

The panicked redcoats hardly even bothered to protect their mortally wounded leader, General Edward Braddock, the recently appointed commander in chief of all British troops in North America. The stinging defeat did, however, provide excellent experience for a 23-year-old Virginian hired by Braddock as a volunteer aide-de-camp, George Washington.

The debacle near present-day Pittsburgh wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Braddock was a soldier with 45 years’ experience. Moreover, his troops were among England’s best, drilled to maintain cohesion along the combat line and looking forward to reaching Fort Duquesne—the opening wedge in their attempt to supplant France as the dominant power in North America.

But, under fire from the French and their Indian allies using trees and rocks for cover, with their own scarlet uniforms serving as excellent targets, His Majesty’s troops found their training of little use in a new kind of asymmetrical warfare. After three hours, with 60 of 80 officers killed or wounded, they broke under the pressure, leaving wagons, provisions, clothing, and personal effects in their wake.

By the time they stumbled away from the Battle of the Monongahela, half of Braddock’s army had been killed or wounded, shocking the British public and their American colonies.

Braddock was not without virtues or insights. He did, after all, spot talent in young Washington, even though the Virginian had, in effect, inadvertently started the French and Indian War in a skirmish in the woods of the Ohio Valley. (See David Preston’s discussion in the October 2019 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.) And he was justly annoyed by the lack of material support he was provided when he first reached the colonies (a situation quickly redressed by horses and wagons rounded up by Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin).

But each day, Braddock proved that his inflexibility was matched only by his irascibility. And, by the end of the campaign and his life, he would have proof that he was mistaken in believing that colonists’ “slothful and languid disposition renders them very unfit for military service.”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman summarized succinctly the limitations of Braddock in a foreign environment:

“Braddock, of course, was entirely ignorant of the type of combat that prevailed in America. What was worse, he was not a man to learn. He lacked all originality of mind and exemplified the system that produced and schooled him, a system traditional, methodical and inflexible. A man of his training was not apt to fail to do everything the regulations and the accepted tactics prescribed. It was still less likely he would do anything more. Trained for war on the continent of Europe, where the masters employed their art, Braddock believed that the tactics in which he had been drilled for forty years were close to perfection…. As a matter of fact, few of the political elders who had the temerity to talk to Braddock about his chosen art of war had any personal experience in frontier fighting. Young men like Washington scarcely counted until they proved themselves.”

Proving himself was what Washington ended up doing in multiple ways in the ambush. Despite having two horses shot from under him, as well as four bullets flying through his hat or uniform, he helped Braddock rally his men; managed to get his wounded commander across the river with the yells of nearby Native Americans ringing in his ears; dug a makeshift grave for Braddock, then covered the evidence of it so the commander’s remains would not be desecrated by his foes; and coordinated the stunned army’s retreat, ensuring its remnants would fight another day.

Though a wave of second-guessing ensued after the battle over why the English forces as a whole performed so badly, young Washington emerged from the catastrophe with an enhanced reputation for coolness and bravery under fire. He finished his service in the French and Indian War as the highest-ranking officer among the Virginia troops, positioning him to be named commander in chief of the Continental Army when hostilities broke out between Britain and its colonies in 1775.

But the Battle of the Monongahela influenced Washington’s career in other key ways, too, through the lessons he took away:

*Native Americans were a powerful force that would have to be dealt with—diplomatically if possible, militarily if necessary. During the American Revolution, Iroquois attacks led Washington to authorize Gen. John Sullivan to crush harassment by the Indians and their Loyalists in southern New York. As President, he sought unsuccessfully to institute a just Indian policy, trying to simultaneously ward off British incitements of Indian raids and settlers' incursions into Indian lands in the Northwest Territory.

*The advice of aides was not to be dismissed lightly. At critical junctures, Braddock, believing that he knew best, ignored the advice of subordinates, including about the need to bolster their number of Indian scouts. In contrast, when he commanded the continentals, Washington was cautious and deliberate to a fault, listening carefully at councils of war.

*Inadequate attention to detail could harm an army. An officer noted that Braddock was “very indolent and seemed glad for anybody to take business off his hands.” In the crucial run-up to battle, his failure to ensure proper reconnoitering ensured that he would blunder into the wilderness. Freeman was scathing about this failure: “Great dangers often are rendered small by vigilance; lesser dangers always are enlarged by negligence.” Washington—who managed his plantation from afar as well as his army during the Revolutionary War—would never make the same mistake.

*British forces were not invincible. Always a realist, Washington knew just how great the odds were that he could defeat the far numerically superior British forces. But his experience with Braddock surely also convinced him that Britain commanders’ overconfidence rendered them vulnerable.

*Military intelligence was crucial. At the Monongahela, the French commander had used intelligence supplied by his network of intelligence scouts to expertly deploy his troops. Braddock’s failure to match this made his defeat inevitable. On the other hand, Washington’s constant attention to this in the American Revolution meant that he could shift the odds against victory more in his service.

*Surprise, even against a heavily favored foe, could carry the day. Shock helped break the will of Braddock’s troops. Two decades later, at the Battle of Trenton, Washington ensured the survival of the patriot cause with a dawn attack on British troops still hung over from Christmas revelry the night before.

Photo of the Day: The Potomac River, As Viewed From Mount Vernon

I took this picture in November 2010, while visiting Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate in Alexandria, VA.

Ignore the apocryphal tale about Washington tossing a silver dollar across this waterway (more likely, it was the narrower Rappahannock River). It is an undeniable truth that in every other way that counted, the Potomac River remained central to his life. 

He located his business—his plantation—here. Believing the Potomac to be “the Nation’s River,” he helped formation a company that sought to link it to the Ohio River, binding the different sections of the young republic in a web of commerce.

And I have to believe, looking out from the back of his home, that Washington appreciated the sheer beauty of this landscape, and sought, every time he had the chance to grab greater power, to forsake it all for the chance to return here.

Photo of the Day: A Leader With a Sense of Right and Wrong

I have encountered this bronze equestrian statue of George Washington several times while walking near New York’s Union Square Park. My most recent sighting not only led me to take this photo, but to think about why it resonates with me so much. 

The oldest statue in New York City’s parks collection, this creation by Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886) has withstood a great deal—the elements, of course, and movement from a traffic island at the southeast corner of the square to its central location in the south plaza. But it remains a point of reference for New Yorkers—most dramatically after 9/11, where it became a de facto shrine.

When I did a Google search to find out the number of statues in this country in honor of this iconic figure, the results amounted to a collective throwing up of the hands. You might as well try to count the number of grains of sand by the ocean. Heck, there’s even a monument to the first American President in London’s Trafalgar Square.

That last bit of unlikely recognition might owe something to the same instinct that led King George III to exclaim that the former American commander-in-chief’s renunciation of the Presidency after two terms “placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living...the greatest character of the age."

Okay, now how many statues of Benedict Arnold are there in the United States? Less than a quarter of a statue. The national park containing Saratoga battlefield in upstate New York honors  the “memory of the most brilliant soldier of the Continental army, who was desperately wounded on this spot, winning for his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution, and for himself the rank of Major General.”

Because Benedict Arnold tried to betray his country three years after Saratoga by handing West Point over to the British, the whole man could not be honored, not even named, only that part of him displaying courage—his boot.

Over time, Americans have become fascinated by our rogues while taking our heroes for granted—even feeling the need to take them down a peg. And so, the man once hailed by one of the men he commanded in the American Revolution, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, as “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen” is having his contributions slighted, when not outright forgotten.

Right-wing Republicans delight in mocking progressives for their politically correct tendency to remove statues. They have a point—until, that is, some of them reveal who their real idea of a hero is.

And so, a few weeks ago, listening to one of the Sunday morning news shows, I heard an admirer of the current White House incumbent hail him as our greatest President—ever.

(By the way, I refuse in this post to include the incumbent’s name. It only feeds his maniacal desire for attention. Instead, I’ll refer to him with an epithet first used by Spy Magazine three decades ago that serves equally well today: “short-fingered vulgarian”—SFV for short.)

No matter how ludicrous, ignorant, insane—okay, downright morally offensive—that judgment might be, this woman is by no means an outlier in the current GOP. A poll this past December by The Economist/YouGov found that a majority (53%) of GOP respondents think SFV is a better president than Abraham Lincoln. If that’s how they feel about the incumbent versus Honest Abe, another Republican, I’m afraid that poor George doesn’t stand a chance.

It's worthwhile, then, going over again why Americans valued the example of Washington for so long—and why Arnold was loathed.

The difference between the traitor and the hero—as well as their motives—are summed up extremely well in Nathaniel Philbrick’s Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution: 

“[Benedict] Arnold had never worried about the consequences of his actions. Guilt was simply not a part of his make-up since everything he did was, to his own mind, at least, justifiable….[But] Washington's sense of right and wrong existed outside the impulsive demands of his own self-interest. Rules mattered to Washington. Even though Congress had made his life miserable for the last four years, he had found ways to do what he considered best for his army and his country without challenging the supremacy of civil authority. To do otherwise, to declare himself, like the seventeenth-century English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, master of his army and his country, would require him to become 'lost to my own character.’”

By a stroke of luck, Arnold narrowly evaded being brought to justice for colluding with a foreign power. Boiling with resentment, set on recrimination, he felt unleashed as a newly commissioned Brigadier General in the British army, laying waste to Virginia. 

In the end, it did him no good. The British lost. Reviled alike by the countrymen whose trust he betrayed and the foreign handlers whose favors he bargained for, Arnold died, feeling more unappreciated than ever, two decades later, unforgiven for wildly conflating the public interest with his own private one.

That “sense of right and wrong” that mattered so much to his old commander—well, for a certain part of the populace that once hailed the stress on "characters" only a couple of decades ago, it seems so old-fashioned, much like the 110 “Rules of Civility,” which Washington copied out as a schoolboy and spent the rest of his life practicing. 

We are going to see soon if we continue to live in Washington’s America or the one desired by Arnold—animated by greed, dancing to the tune of outside forces who abominate democracy.

If we ever erect a statue in honor of the SFV so preferred by so many Republicans, I suggest that it be, in the manner of Arnold’s at Saratoga, not a Washington-style equestrian figure but something more appropriate—an upraised middle finger.