Happy Birthday, President Washington

King George asked Thomas Jefferson, who was our diplomat on his way to Paris, “Now that your General Washington has won the war, will he become your King?”

Jefferson replied, ” No. He has no interest in that. He will go back to his farm.”

The king said, “If he does that, he is the greatest man in history.”

George Washington did go back to his beloved Mount Vernon, after the Revolutionary War, but only briefly. Instead, less than a year later, he was unanimously elected to serve as our nation’s first President.

What kind of a man was this? He was known as a man of prayer, who firmly believed that Divine Province guided our national destiny. He was a Free Mason of advanced degree, but only had a minimal elementary education. He married relatively late in life and inherited in that union, a large estate with slaves, and who, upon his death in 1799, had them all set free with paid pensions.

George Washington was an unassuming man, who did not wish to be President, and who had to be talked into serving. He also declined a third term, because he thought it was wrong for the country to be so dependent on one person.

He agreed to a second term because no other candidate was acceptable to the new political factions, whose candidates were Hamilton, and Jefferson. During Washington’s first term, these two factions practiced such heated politics that it nearly tore the country apart. People realized that it was only President Washington’s reputation and his level-headed leadership that kept the infant nation together, and allowed it to grow.

Washington was not the best educated or the most accomplished of the founding fathers. He was not even a man of great intellect, and frankly he wasn’t that much of a tactical military man. But Washington had something unique that the great men of the time, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Monroe, did not have – which was the ability to instill trust as an honest and able leader. All of the great men around him entreated him to accept a second term of President, which he reluctantly did.

In fact, in those days, George Washington was so popular among the people of all the 13 states that He was continually asked to declare himself King. Even the senior officers in the Continental Army wanted him to claim a throne. But Washington declined to even consider it.

And thus, our young nation, in its greatest time of need as a Republic, had the one man at the helm who resolutely set us on our course, and did not allow personal ambition or vain glory to keep us from becoming a great and free nation.

George Washington was one of the greatest men in the world in that day, and perhaps of any time in history. It is very likely we would not have such a rich and wonderful heritage if he had been any different.

Happy birthday, President Washington.

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