Being George Washington Read online

  But Washington combined his overwhelming sense of rectitude (he’s the guy who willingly gives up his seat on the subway) with genuine humility and incredible physical courage. He was, to put it bluntly, a man’s man, the real deal—the total package.

  I know what you may be thinking: But I’ll never be the whole package.

  Fair enough. But you’ll probably never be asked to lead a revolution, either. You might just be asked to help with a food pantry. Or help clean up the mess on the local school board. Or make sure that your children know our real history. If you haven’t been George Washington before—well, start being George Washington now. Yesterday can be an easy excuse on the way to missing out on tomorrow.

  Washington’s unyielding emphasis on character and reputation helped make him one of the most trusted leaders in all history. How do I know? Well, consider that in 1776 he wrote Congress asking for unprecedented power to execute maneuvers without waiting for approval. This was all he wrote:

  It may be said that this is an application for powers that are too dangerous to be entrusted; I can only add that desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and with truth declare that I have no lust after power, but wish with as much fervency as any man upon this wide, extended continent for an opportunity of turning the sword into a plowshare. But my feelings as an officer and a man have been such as to force me to say that no person ever had a greater choice of difficulties to contend with than I have.

  Is there anyone on the planet today who could just say, “I swear I’m telling the truth—I don’t really want power, but please give it to me anyway,” and actually be believable? Of course not—but Congress not only gave Washington unprecedented control of the army, it also gave him this:

  [The power] to take, wherever he may be, whatever he may want for the use of the army, if the inhabitants will not sell it, allowing a reasonable price for the same; to arrest and confine persons who refuse to take the continental currency, or are otherwise disaffected to the American cause; and return to the states of which they are citizens, their names, and the nature of their offences, together with the witnesses to prove them….

  In other words, they gave him the power to basically imprison anyone he wanted to.

  George Washington’s name was synonymous with trust (the Congress said it had “perfect reliance on [his] wisdom, vigour, and uprightness”). His word was his bond. Congress granted him six months of emergency power and, if they had any reservations about doing so, those fears likely vanished once they saw Washington’s response:

  Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by this mark of … confidence, I shall constantly bear in mind that as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first to be laid aside when those liberties are firmly established.

  The Great Author, Revealed

  Revisionist historians have tried to diminish Washington’s faith in God, but it is clearly evident in his writings. Washington learned very much from his father, who (as the legend goes) once taught young George a lesson using cabbage seeds. He arranged them in such a way that they spelled “George.” When they began to grow, he showed them to his son and explained to him that they just grew that way by happenstance. When George correctly rejected that premise, suspecting it was his Dad who arranged them, he told George to look around at how perfectly everything else was placed. The trees. The grass. The water. The hills. The sky.

  Was it all mere coincidence, or was it part of a grand plan?

  Washington immediately knew the answer.

  PROVIDENCE’S PROTECTION

  Anyone who walked a single day in Washington’s shoes would likely suspect the involvement of a greater power in his life.

  He was a surveyor (of all things) as a youth and his knowledge of the lay of the land would later be crucial to winning the war.

  He was minutes away from becoming a British sailor, until the last minute, when his mom persuaded him to stay home.

  During a humiliating defeat in the French and Indian War, Washington should have been killed when his unit was ambushed.

  Washington wrote that the English “regulars” displayed “more cowardice than it is possible to conceive.” Meanwhile, Washington’s horse was shot out from under him multiple times and he miraculously escaped four bullets that pierced his hat and clothing.

  The Great Protector

  A thousand enemy soldiers were captured, killed, or wounded in battle. But the toll on the rebels’ side was not nearly as dramatic. Washington lost two soldiers, and five others were injured. That’s it. It’s no wonder he believed so fervently in the Invisible Hand.

  The list goes on and on, and while many say all of it was simply coincidence or luck, Washington himself did not believe that, writing to his brother: “I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation; I had 4 Bullets through my Coat and two horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt.”

  With those experiences running through his mind as he stood before an icy Delaware River and contemplated taking his beaten-down army across it to face a powerful enemy, Washington prayed that God would once again defend the fight for liberty.

  So, given his reliance on the great Author, no one should have been surprised when Washington took the unconventional route and decided to go ahead and attack the Hessians at Trenton, even though no one, including Washington and his officers, had any idea how they were going to pull it off.

  Washington’s CIA: “The Continental Intelligence Agency”

  Because of the American army’s smaller numbers and lack of firepower, Washington knew that an essential element of effective defensive warfare would have to be superior intelligence. The Americans needed to know at all times not only where the British were and what they were doing, but also what they planned to do. When the British were weak, Washington could strike suddenly and powerfully (as he did at Trenton and Monmouth). When the British were strong, the Americans could safely keep their distance (as he did in retreating across New Jersey).

  But gathering the kind of solid intelligence that would allow for these sorts of decisions to be made could only be accomplished in one way: with a web of reliable spies.

  When British forces occupied New York early in the war the patriots realized they had quickly lost one of their most strategically important cities and naval centers. So, by 1778, Washington appointed an unsung hero, an officer named Benjamin Tallmadge, to establish one of the war’s most potent, vital, and successful spy rings. The group—known as the Culper Spy Ring—did more damage than any espionage ring from either side.

  In addition to the gradual establishment of other elaborate spy networks (Nathan Hale was Washington’s most famous and valiant—if least successful—spy), Washington created a smooth counterintelligence system through which he fed a stream of false information to British agents. Some fabrications reached the enemy through three or four different—all seemingly reliable—sources, and some of the misinformation actually bore the ultimate mark of authenticity: Washington’s own handwriting.

  ABOVE-AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE

  Was it a leap of faith? Sure—but he wasn’t about to leave it all up to Him. Washington is more than just a Founding Father of our country—he’s also considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of American espionage. “There is nothing more necessary,” he wrote of his experiences in the French and Indian War, “than good intelligence to frustrate a designing enemy, and nothing that requires greater pains to obtain.”

  It was a lesson that he applied throughout his military career (especially at Yorktown), but perhaps nowhere did it matter more than at the Battle of Trenton.

  By April 1776 Washington had spent $5,232 (a fairly large sum) on intelligence gathering. Documents also show that, as late as December 1776, Washington wrote letters focused on acquiring intelligence on British troop locations, numbers, plans, and more—and senior
officer Colonel Joseph Reed was also busy gathering intelligence for the Trenton invasion.

  But gathering intel was one thing—applying it was what really mattered, and at that Washington excelled. When he conspired with Trenton-area spy John Honeyman, he instructed Honeyman to continue trading with Americans and the enemy alike. The plan worked a little too well—Honeyman was the subject of attacks from patriots upset at his dealing with the Brits. That all but erased any doubts the British and Hessians might have had about Honeyman’s loyalties.

  The Spy Who Never Was?

  The story of double agent John Honeyman is legendary—but no one really knows if it’s true.

  Honeyman, it is said, offered Washington detailed information about the Hessian positions and conditions of their troops in and around Trenton. Perhaps more important, he fed the Hessian commander disinformation about the Americans, claiming that the colonial army was too weak to launch an attack.

  When a mob of colonialists almost lynched him in his home in New Jersey in 1776, Honeyman and his family were only saved because they had a letter of safe passage from Washington.

  If the story is accurate, then Honeyman is undoubtedly a hero of the American Revolution—but that accuracy is very much in doubt. The first written record of his involvement as Washington’s spy appears in an 1873 magazine article written by Honeyman’s own grandson. Given that this was nearly a hundred years after the event, the account has been met with a lot of skepticism. Since then the legend has only grown and has been integrated into historical accounts.

  In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Washington’s Crossing, historian David Hackett Fischer writes that stories of Honeyman’s double-crossing the British are “unsupported by evidence” and he treats the entire story as legend. The CIA’s Studies in Intelligence published a paper titled “The Spy Who Never Was: The Strange Case of John Honeyman and Revolutionary War Espionage.” You can guess from the title what the agency believes.

  Honeyman used his credibility to gather as much information as possible and, eventually, Washington staged an elaborate capture-and-escape sequence to get briefed. He received all of Honeyman’s intelligence on military—but more important, after his “escape,” Honeyman is said to have reported to Hessian commander Colonel Johann Rall that morale among Washington’s men was so low that there was no chance they could ever attack Trenton. This was all very plausible to Rall, especially with Christmas right around the corner, and it gave the colonel a false sense of security.

  Honeyman’s point on morale was partially true. It had been low. But that was only before Thomas Paine’s immortal, inspiring words were read to Washington’s men before they crossed the Delaware.

  Paine sold 120,000 copies of the pamphlet that contained those words in just three months. He sold 500,000 by the end of the war—meaning that almost 13% of the entire population had received a copy.

  His stirring words, combined with Washington’s determination to push forward, reenergized the Continental Army. But on their march to Trenton, the freezing soldiers must have been asking where their commander’s “Invisible Hand” was. Not only were they woefully behind schedule, but they also left behind a nine-mile trail of blood from frostbitten feet wrapped in rags. Two men perished during this intolerable trek. It was a miracle that more did not die.

  While raging storms caused Washington’s army to miss its scheduled arrival time, the Invisible Hand still remained hard at work. Colonel Rall was overconfident and understaffed (he only had about 1,500 troops on site; Washington had 2,500 and would have had several thousand more if his other regiments weren’t stymied by the raging river). Rall might have been reinforced except for the mysterious young widow who busily “entertained” Colonel Carl von Donop nearby. Von Donop’s dallying kept his troops from perhaps tipping the balance against Washington.

  A Mystery Woman

  While it’s not at all certain that Betsy Ross was the widow who stayed with von Donop, she is a likely candidate. Her husband, John Ross—to whom she’d been married for just two years—had recently been killed while guarding munitions for the war effort. The Rosses went to church in Philadelphia and sat in the pew next to George and Martha Washington’s. She was passionate about the revolution, working with upholstery to repair uniforms and stuffing paper tube cartridges with musket balls. And, while it’s not confirmed, she reportedly stitched the first American flag and presented it to George Washington in person in the spring of 1776.

  Whether or not it was actually Betsy Ross who made the first Stars and Stripes or “entertained” the enemy doesn’t really matter—what matters is that someone did do those things. Someone used their skills to create a symbol of freedom that would help to rally demoralized troops and remind them what they were fighting for. A widow did actually pretend to be interested in some pompous British colonel for the cause of liberty. Troops did march barefoot in the freezing cold and driving snow—lead by a man of honor. And, of course, someone did watch over it all.

  It’s easy to get lost in the grandeur of Washington’s accomplishments: commander, war hero, president, Founding Father—he was almost mythical, larger than life. But his accomplishments are not what make him great: it was his small, nearly unnoticed acts that did. His simple faith in God, his desire to be a man of virtue in everything he said and did, his focus on the tiniest of character traits all accumulated over time and formed an unshakable, virtuous character built on solid rock. He could not be bought off, tricked, or beaten into submission by the world around him.

  You may not lead an army of men onto the battlefield. You may not ever help to found a country or serve as president, but you can absolutely be every bit as great as George Washington. Be great in your own city, your own neighborhood, and, most important, your own family. Be someone who relies on character and honor to lead and there will be no bounds to what you can accomplish.

  4

  A Valley Forged of Despair

  December 21, 1777

  Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

  It was, by the calendar, four days before Christmas and, by the map, eighteen miles northwest of Philadelphia—though nothing about this forlorn place and time suggested anything resembling Christmas festivities or the traditional urban comforts, like taverns, well-stocked shops, or a busy harbor ushering in fine wines and silks.

  There was no luxury at all upon this barren, windswept countryside.

  General Washington, his breath billowing into little clouds of steam against the late December air, tugged at his great chestnut steed’s reins, bringing the animal to a halt. Washington’s officers recognized his cue and instantly barked commands to their ragged troops, their mismatched uniforms threadbare, their once spit-shined boots and shoes long reduced to filthy leather tatters. One by one, eleven thousand cold, tired men, trudging in a column that seemed to stretch from one defeat to the next, stopped in place.

  Washington surveyed the woodlots and farmsteads that surrounded him. It was good, solid farm country, but, at that moment, farming was the furthest thing from his mind.

  They called this place they had come upon a valley, but it was not. And that was good. A valley would merely act as a trap for an army trying to settle into its winter quarters while its enemy, General William Howe, lurked dangerously within striking distance. This place, this “Valley Forge,” as they called it, was instead a high ground bounded by a brace of creeks and the Schuylkill River. If Howe was determined to attack, Washington thought, his own ragged Continental Army might at least enjoy some advantage of terrain.

  But terrain, Washington realized, might be his sole advantage. His magnificent triumphs at Trenton and Princeton, though less than a single year ago and but a few dozen miles away, now seemed like victories from the worn history books that he had read as a child—books of battles won by ancient Greece and Rome, of ancient republics that had long since fallen to ruin and despotism.

  Washington’s army had recently faced its own ruins. General Howe, not satisfied
with merely holding New York, had set sail southward, to seize Philadelphia, capital of the upstart colonists. Washington resolved to stop him, but it was not to be. At Brandywine, south of Philadelphia, Howe and his assistant, General Charles Cornwallis, along with their British and Hessian troops, had dealt Washington a stinging defeat. The armies of the Crown marched into cobblestoned Philadelphia, causing the Continental Congress to pack up and flee west to Lancaster, and then even farther westward, to York. It seemed the Congress could not run far enough.

  Washington leaned forward in his saddle. He saw a snowflake fall upon his heavy blue woolen sleeve and he felt the cold wind upon his cheeks. This Valley Forge contained little of value to shelter an army with a Pennsylvania winter fast approaching. Not only was it not a valley, but it no longer even contained a forge. Beyond that, the British had already moved through the area, stripping it bare of what little provisions it may have once contained. Its inhabitants were largely Quakers and, being pacifistic, had little urge to aid any armed rebellion. There was no appreciable lodging nearby—only a few scattered farmhouses—so enough shelter to quarter eleven thousand men would have to be built quickly.

  Eleven thousand men, thought Washington. That would make this isolated encampment the fourth-largest city in the colonies. He caught himself: No, not the “colonies”—the states. Washington pondered all this as he caught a glimpse of the area’s lone sawmill. The Valley Creek upon which it stood was already frozen solid. It would be of no help to Washington or his men in building their city of wretched little huts.