On President’s Day, we naturally look back on the legacy of George Washington, soldier. Statesman, first President, and patriotic icon. In the days when history was taught in schools, every child knew the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Young George, in a moment of childish madness, cut down one of his father’s favorite trees. When accused of the crime, the boy is reported to have said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie,” and confessed.
“I cannot tell a lie.” It sounds so strange to us now. If this story is still told to kids at school (although it is probably censored), it must make their eyes pop out. But George Washington was a very exceptional human being.
My parents taught me to be truthful and polite, and I’ve done my best. But it has been a great handicap. It didn’t take long to discover that truth and good manners are losing strategies, and that the loudest, most shameless, and most boorish voice in the room always wins. A polite person wears an invisible straitjacket and is inhibited from doing all sorts of effective, self-promoting things, like yelling, bullying, insulting, lying, and boasting. Unfortunately, these are essential tools of success in the modern world. Be polite, and you might as well carry a sign saying "Go ahead, walk all over me."
George Washington was determined from an early age to set a good example. David McCullough, in his splendid history Seventeen Seventy-Six, tells us that Washington was described by his contemporaries as: brave, dignified, stern, generous, amiable, modest, gracious, and hospitable. We can never really know a historical figure, of course, especially one so surrounded by legend. But when he was only sixteen, Washington wrote out a set of 110 “Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior,” that we can still consult with profit today.
Washington was part of a different civilization, which now seems almost alien to us. He may not have obeyed all of his hundred and ten rules of civility in his own life – no politician could. But the gentlemen of 1776 were “gentlemen” in the old-fashioned sense with elaborate codes of politeness that were seen not as a weakness but as the necessary glue that held civilization together.
Washington managed to be a commanding figure while remaining endearingly modest. This was a politically turbulent and violent time, and passions ran high. After the Revolutionary War, some members of Congress urged Washington to declare himself a king, which he angrily refused. The arbitrary rule of one man was exactly the system that America had been fighting against since 1776.
This may explain my perhaps naïve nostalgia for the eighteenth century, when modesty, thoughtfulness, and civility were to be found even in the most powerful men in the land, at least some of the time. It’s ancient history, I know, and it’s an equally ancient cliché that history repeats itself. Sometimes you wish it would.
