6-130 McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader. - Lesson CXXX. The Character of George Washington. (Supplementary reading)

"Very early too, he learned to control his temper, and Washington had a fiery temper. In fact Washington was afraid of his own temper. He lost it on one occasion when the troops fled in the face of England. And he completely lost his head, he swore at them, he was ready to strike them down and when they kept running he was so bitterly discouraged he turned his horse towards the enemy and was ready to ride right into the enemy ranks and die alone rather than retreat. But some of his officers grabbed the horses reigns and pulled him back. That was the one occasion when he publicly lost his temper. ...

I’ve read all the published letters of Washington, and only once have I ever found him breaking down and giving advice. And this was to his nephew Bushrod, who was studying law. He later became an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and he was having financial difficulties. And so George Washington wrote him a long letter, of advice, counseling him, saying that “I’m not prying into what you have been doing or what your problems are”, but giving him counsel to avoid vice, to avoid gambling, and always to be generous to be others, remembering always the estimation of the widows mite, and so on. In another letter, to another nephew, George S. Washington, there is a hint of advice, but no actual advice. Washington was not a man who said anything when it was going to be useless to talk. He didn’t waste words. But he could use words very powerfully, and this was one of the reasons why he was such an able commander. Those of you who have studied American History in the not too remote past may remember the Conway Cabal, when a group of officers and citizens, members of congress, formed a conspiracy to out Washington as commander, and replace him with General Gates, or someone else. Now, for the members of Congress to think along these lines was legitimate. But for Army officers, to conspire behind their commander’s back, to have him ousted, was not legitimate. One of the worst men in this conspiracy was Doctor Benjamin Rush. Well, one of the letters fell into the hands of Patrick Henry. And Patrick Henry immediately forwarded the letter to Washington and warned him of what was apparently going on. And he left it to Washington to act, but offered to give him any assistance whatsoever. Now this was something that could be very serious. How did Washington handle it? Well, he simply wrote a letter to Brigadier General Conway, as follows:

“The 9th of November, 1777. Sir, A letter which I received last night contained the following paragraph. In a letter from General Conway to General Gates, he says: ‘Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad councilors would have ruined it. I am, sir, your humble servant, George Washington.”

That was all! Just one sentence out of the letter. Well, Conway began to sweat, and every other officer that was in the Cabal to sweat, wondering “How much does Washington know?” He just said that and said nothing more, and went on as though nothing had happened, they’d come around and make an occasion, everyone in the conspiracy to talk to him, to see what his attitude was like, and how much did he know, and he was just the same as always, but they felt more and more uncomfortable in his eyes, so every one of them came quickly in to confess and to say “well, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t take it seriously,” and so on, and the whole thing disappeared. Now if Washington had tried to prosecute the matter, they would have immediately said: “Well where’s your evidence? You don’t have enough evidence to convict us.” It would’ve been a legal matter you see. But since he did nothing but simply indicate I know what’s going on, they were busy imagining every kind of possible act he was going to take, and they fell apart. And that’s the kind of leadership he exercised. But most importantly, he never, at any point took it out upon any man that was involved in the Cabal. He knew their strengths and he knew their weaknesses. And he used every one of those men, both them and later on as the President he used some of them, wherever he thought they could do the most good. In other words, his thinking was: “It’s not how they feel about me as an individual, it is what can they do for the country.” Some of them were actually appointed to high office when he became president. Washington understood people. He knew what they were and what they could do. And as a result, because he was above being personal, he could lead men. Washington believed that God alone could change man, human advice alone could not. But there was a human answer to man’s condition, law and order. And Washington believed strongly in this, and militarily this meant discipline. Washington sought to set an example for the men, as a Christian gentleman, and as a Christian officer, and have strong discipline. He was emphatic at all time of the need for chaplains, about the need of drills, about the need for taking the troops and making them into seasoned soldiers. We have no idea because the books give us a very inadequate picture, what a tremendous problem he had. His ability to impose discipline upon the soldiers was very limited. They were an army of volunteers for the most part, and they deserted readily and easily. As a matter of fact one historian has written and I quote:

“It is rather breathtaking now, after all the bunk about unanimous resistance that our school history choked down our young throats, to realize that perhaps 40% of the population of the colonies was flamingly pro-British. Let us pause for a moment for figures. The total population of America on the day that Washington took command of the army at Cambridge was approximately two million five hundred thousand. Let’s us say generously that at least half that total were women. This leaves 1,250,000 males. In the Revolution there was no age limit in the army, men from 16 to 60 fought side by side in the rebel army. Consequently. Consider the appalling child mortality which cut down most children before they reached 16. About 5 out of every 7 males were within the limits of a draft. That leaves perhaps 892,850 effective. But from this we must subtract the 40% who were loyalist. 535,700 men remain. Now we must remember the element that was neither loyalist nor patriot. We must remember the lukewarm, the neutral, who trembled between the two extremes. Vacantly waiting to see which side would win. When the war was over and America triumphed, these people claimed to have been as patriotic as the rest. But during those seven so harrowing years, these lukewarmers numbered about 25%, or over 300,000 of the male population. After  all these eliminations, about 225,000 men remain as the potential military equivalent that Washington ought to have been able to rely upon. As things turned out he never once had an army of over 25,000. And most of the time, straggling and bedraggled, it numbered between 3,000 and 15,000. The 15,000 at Brandywine was the largesta force Washington ever took into the field for a single engagement. It is hard to reconcile these cold facts with our pink and white American traditions of “the spirit of 1776”. – From “A Short History of the American Revolution” by John Hyde Preston."http://www.pocketcollege.com/beta/index.php…