Patterico's Pontifications

2/22/2024

George Washington Avoids a Self-Aggrandizing Title

Filed under: General — JVW @ 6:09 am



[guest post by JVW]

Today leaves us a mere eight years shy of the tricentennial of the birth of the Indispensable American, our first President George Washington. In the — gulp! — ten years that I have been guest blogging here I have tried to make it a tradition to mark the Great Man’s birthday by discussing one of the aspects of his life which helped shaped who are are as a country. Past entries are as follows:

2015 – George Washington’s Birthday
2016 – George Washington Quiets the Rebellion
2017 – George Washington Fears for His Country’s Future
2018 – George Washington Agrees to Serve Another Term
2019 – George Washington Goes Back to His Farm
2020 – George Washington Rallies the Troops
2021 – damn you, COVID
2022 – George Washington Takes Stock of the Senate
2023 – George Washington Goes to Church

Because this is an election year, I find myself thinking about how we Americans view our President. That, and the Roman Empire of course. I have long complained about my fellow countrymen and countrywomen’s predilection for exalting our Chief Executive and turning him into some sort of demi-God. We’ve seen this tendency from both parties, most explicitly within the past sixteen years. Part of this is the modern tendency of the President to behave like a celebrity, dominating news cycles, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, gallivanting across the country and the world in an effort to keep his name front and center. As for me, I prefer a Calvin Coolidge type, a salt-of-the-earth sort of fellow of acknowledged ability and strong character, and I lament that we no longer seem to recognize the virtue in that type, preferring instead the narcissists and popinjays with a high Q-score.

George Washington was a proud and dignified man who was born into a landholding family and who increased his own station in life by hard work and an advantageous marriage. He observed a stiff formality in his adult life, preferring a courtly bow by way of greeting rather than the more familiar handshake. Once he became the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army on July 3, 1775, he was usually formally addressed as “His Excellency, General George Washington,” a practice that according to biographer Joseph Ellis sprung from congratulatory letters addressed thusly sent to him by the Massachusetts and New York legislatures. (Colonial governors were also regularly addressed as “Your Excellency.”) Phillis Wheatley, a slave and poet, sent the General an original work of hers along with a letter wishing “your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in.” It was an apt designation for the man who carried with him the hopes of independence of his fellow colonists.

At one point, His Excellency’s insistence upon a proper title held up a British offer to allow the defeated Continental Army to escape from Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan after the Battle of Long Island in March of 1776. British General William Howe sent a letter to his American counterpart proposing lenient terms, but addressed it to “George Washington, Esq. &c. &c. &c.” His Excellency, already angry about the battlefield loss, refused to receive the letter. This was not an ego trip from the Continental General. When General Washington’s staff explained that he would not receive a letter so disrespectfully addressed, General Howe’s adjutant countered that to address his opponent in such respectful terms would lend legitimacy to to the rebellion. And so came an impasse.

But at the point where the revolution had been won and the first President set about establishing how the new Chief Executive would serve in this important role, the Great Man’s republican nature kicked in. Over in the Senate, a debate about how to address the national leader was underway. Vice-President John Adams, presiding over the upper chamber, suggested the grandiose titles “His Elective Majesty,” “His Mightiness,” and, incredibly enough, “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and the Protector of their Liberties.” Other members of Congress proposed “Your Highness” and “Your Most Benign Highness.” One Senator who at least understood the electoral process suggested “His Elected Highness.”

Then apparently one Congressman, whose name is unfortunately lost to history, read the Constitution and saw in Article 1, Section 9 that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States,” and that was that. So instructed, Congress settled upon the title we have come to know, “the President of the United States of America.” In a further exercise in modesty, the holder of the office would come to be addressed as simply “Mr. President.”

Nowhere in the record is any indication of George Washington’s disposition in the title debate, but it seems unlikely that the figure who embodied our battle against monarchy would have desired a florid title better suited to heredity succession. The man who twice gave up power in order to return to his farm would not be likely to covet the title of “majesty” or “highness,” so I think it’s a safe bet that our first President gladly accepted the decision of Congress. In her terrific book Star-Spangled Manners, the inimitable Judith Martin, who writes as Miss Manners, explains the importance of President Washington appearing regal despite the humble title, while being forced to make it all up on the fly:

After all that work, a protocol-pooped first government turned over to the President the stylistically impossible task of appearing as both humble and exalted; a federal authority respectful of, but not subservient to, state authority; an unpretentious citizen thinking himself no better than his meanest countryman yet a figure of enormous dignity, respected, if not venerated, by all. Even the inaugural proceedings, the ceremony to raise to the country’s highest honor someone who was expected to make it clear that he wasn’t taking it too personally, was left to the President’s own design, with only the oath of office specified.

Today, long after kaisers have been displaced by chancellors and kings have given way to prime ministers, the world can look to the example of George Washington, Great Man though he was, as the model of the democratically elected leader of a republic, the first among equals. It’s another reason to remember him today and rejoice that it was he who set the course for our fledgling democracy.

– JVW

12 Responses to “George Washington Avoids a Self-Aggrandizing Title”

  1. One of Washington’s great virtues was that he knew when to walk away from public life. He never thought he was indispensable and certainly he was not self-aggrandizing as our politicians have become.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  2. My wife’s birthday is the same as Washington’s (but not the year). It used to be a holiday, and rightly so.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  3. While Washington’s gifts to the nation were manifest, his treatment of enslaved workers was poor. The story of Ona Judge is an example of that poor practice.

    Ona Judge was born into slavery at Mount Vernon in 1773. At the point when Washington served as President in Philadelphia, she was Martha’s personal maid. Pennsylvania, with the active support of Benjamin Franklin, was gradually moving towards abolition, which affected federal officers from the South who had brought enslaved persons into PA.

    https://www.history.com/news/george-washington-and-the-slave-who-got-away

    With an active and growing free black community of some 6,000 people, Philadelphia had become the nation’s leading hotbed of abolitionism. In fact, as Erica Armstrong Dunbar writes in her book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Oney would have been in the minority as a enslaved woman in Philadelphia; fewer than 100 slaves lived within city limits in 1796. To evade a gradual abolition law that took effect in Pennsylvania in 1780, the Washingtons made sure to transport their enslaved workers in and out of the state every six months to avoid them establishing legal residency.

    In the spring of 1796, when she was 22 years old, Judge learned that Martha Washington planned to give her away as a wedding gift to her famously temperamental granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis. As Dunbar writes, “Martha Washington’s decision to turn Judge over to Eliza was a reminder to Judge and everyone enslaved at the Executive Mansion that they had absolutely no control over their lives, no matter how loyally they served.”

    So, as the household prepared for the Washingtons’ return to Mount Vernon for the summer, Judge made plans for her escape. On May 21, 1796, she slipped out of the mansion while the president and first lady were eating their supper. Members of the free black community helped her get aboard a ship commanded by Captain John Bowles, who sailed frequently between Philadelphia, New York and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After a five-day journey, Judge disembarked in that coastal city, where she would begin her new life.

    Through intermediaries, Washington attempted to find and recover Judge, and there was an attempt to bargain her back into slavery but neither side was truthful about their intent (Judge was temporizing and Washington’s promise of eventual freedom wasn’t possible — she was part of an entailment)

    Judge remained free the rest of her life.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  4. Great post, JVW. I love how you write.

    DRJ (cb6fe5)

  5. President Washington appearing regal despite the humble title

    Trump would do the opposite. He’d be styled “His Exalted Majesty” while exhibiting the most maculate behavior.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  6. I can’t remember where I read or heard it, but someone said the two most relevant moments in presidential history were (1) Washington not serving more than two terms and (2) Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. I can’t argue.

    Paul Montagu (d4d407)

  7. More about what;s wrong with AI created content.

    Google has something like CHAT GPT. As is the case with all of them it is not aware of the difference between fact and fiction. Everything it writes is fictiuon.

    Well, they decided they anted to show people from different backgrounds in different situations. It made a copy of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring” in which she is black, and showed female hockey players, and this is what it did when asked for a portrait of a Founding Father”

    https://nypost.com/cover/february-22-2024/

    It looks kind of like a black George Washington.

    When asked for a group of Founding Fathers it shoed five, one of them black (although all male and all between about 35 and 50 years old)

    See also:

    https://nypost.com/2024/02/22/opinion/googles-push-to-lecture-us-on-diversity-goes-beyond-ai

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  8. George Washington was America’s greatest president. Also its greatest person. He could have made himself king ;but refused even though in the short run it would of helped solve a America’s problems in the the long run it would not. Young black american’s say but he owned slaves. He was not perfect but he was better then any other american. John Brown America’s second greatest and Abraham Lincoln america’s third greatest were not perfect either. The movie 1776 shows the difficulties the issue of slavery has always been. Hundreds of thousands of americans died to expunge it. We are not perfect ;but thanks to liberals (Alan Colmes book) we try to move toward justice for all.

    asset (e817da)

  9. President Washington was a great leader and exactly the kind of man we needed at the time. The destruction of history as taught in schools today is appalling and would disgust most who have learned their history decades ago.

    NJRob (5dac75)

  10. Wikipedia has this to say about Washington:

    He was taller than most of his contemporaries; accounts of his height vary from 6 ft (1.83 m) to 6 ft 3.5 in (1.92 m) tall, he weighed between 210–220 pounds (95–100 kg) as an adult, and was known for his great strength.[

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

    Pretty impressive for that time.

    norcal (1d2eca)

  11. George Washington was America’s greatest president.

    asset, you have surprised me today, and for as often as I am critical of you I want to extend a sincere Washington’s Birthday salute to you and thank you for this comment.

    (I’m not particularly fond of the movie 1776, but this is no time to quibble over minutiae.)

    JVW (5392a1)

  12. Great post, JVW. I love how you write.

    Thanks, DRJ. I know I have said this before, but your approval means a great deal to me.

    JVW (5392a1)


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