“HIS INTEGRITY WAS MOST PURE”
by James Still, ©2017, RetraceOurSteps.com
(Feb. 1, 2017) — George Washington was born in Virginia on February 22, 1732. He was appointed County Surveyor at the age of 17 and joined the British Army at 21. Washington was a Virginia Delegate to the First Continental Congress, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, President of the Constitutional Convention and unanimously elected first President of the United States. Washington died at his Mt. Vernon home at the age of 67 on December 14, 1799. Washington’s birthday was set aside as a federal holiday in 1885 in honor of America’s first president.
Here is Thomas Jefferson’s description of Washington: “He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, & a great man.
… [It] may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny & merit of leading the armies of his country successfully thro’ an arduous war for the establishment of it’s independence, of conducting it’s councils thro’ the birth of a government, new in it’s forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train, and of scrupulously obeying the laws, thro’ the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814
“… [Washington] considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and… he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814
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“… [Washington’s stature was] exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814
“… should we wander from [The Founding Principles]… let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.” Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
YES – integrity and principles are virtues our present-day leaders lack. Until President Trump.
Experience has taught us, not much is able to be changed in one life time. The pulls of conformity have enormous powers on all in their particular day. As the model of change goes, however, President George Washington leads in a change so very powerful in the carving out of a New Nation. It is remarkable to think of and gigantic in the proposition of the Founders endeavoring and succeeding in their lifetimes. We pale in comparison fighting tooth and nail just to stand up for one clause of the U.S. Constitution that he and first Chief Justice Jon Jay wrote each other about in part of Article II. Section 1, Clause 5 regarding the qualification of the Office of the President termed: [natural born Citizen] ie. born in the U.S. to Citizen Parents, and the very smooth acknowledgement that they indeed would need to be Grandfathered in under the Jurisdiction of that New Nation as [Citizen(s)] – at the Time of the Adoption of this Constitution]
Great Post!
http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/
Slave owner. Let’s not deify the man. He freed his slaves after his death. Sounds a bit selfish and hypocritical.
If he believed that slavery was wrong he should have freed them before his death. If not then he should have passed them to his heirs.