The Founding Choice That Defined America: Washington’s Refusal to Be King

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories in our July Fourth special. All show long, we’re celebrating America and the things that make our nation what it is. Up next to the story of how this country came to be and how, despite the odds, we managed to be the largest military force on Earth to gain our independence. Here’s our own Montay Montgomery with a story.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: On July Fourth, 1776, representatives from our thirteen original colonies came together and agreed to an act of treason: the Declaration of Independence. Here’s Hillsdale College President Doctor Arnn with the story of what happened next.

00:00:56
Speaker 3: The stakes were life and death. There was a warrant issued for theirs to the British general commanding the troops in North America. In other words: not an order to a policeman who would put them in jail and then take them before a judge, a soldier who would detain them and ship them to England or hang them on the spot where they were arrested. So that’s, you know, the last sentence of the Declaration of Independence says: “In support of this Declaration, we mutually pledged to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” And many of them lost those lives or their fortunes, none of them their honor. So, the huge stakes. You know, it’s hard for us to look back on the past and understand that they’re living just the way we are, without knowledge of the future. And if you can grasp that fact about the people in Philadelphia, those men in that little room — we’re both, by the way — the same room the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted and ratified. They just passed it and put their names on the Declaration of Independence in that room. And, you know, we know what the King thought. The King thought, “This is a crazy claim. I’m the King. There’s always been a King. There has to be a King, and you have to obey the King, and the King, by the way, has to be good to you. And so this is crazy.” So they’re introducing a thing that nobody believes, and then, add to it: they’re introducing it in controversy, ultimately treason, against the strongest living force — the British Empire and its navy especially, but also its army — recently twice beaten France in major wars, right? And so what possible chance could they have, you know, because they when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, they didn’t really have anything that you could call an army. And George Washington had been appointed head of it because he had the most experience of anybody in war, of anybody on the revolutionary side, but he had never moved a large body of troops from one place to another or fed them along the way in his life. And the British were practiced at all that stuff and had hundreds of staff guys who knew all about how to do that. And so in the beginning the war was ridiculous because we couldn’t get our army around anywhere, and the British would always just encircle us. Right. It was just funny how bad it was. We didn’t have opinion polls back then, but the guesses tend to congregate around 30% strongly for the Revolution, and a majority of the rest again started leaning against, and a bunch of people trying to make up their minds, so it wasn’t propitious. And if you just think about it, this is a people, by the way — you have to remember this. For 150 years, settlers especially had been on the North American continent, and they had developed the richest, deepest practices and institutions of self-government in human history. And they did that on their own, and the British had influence on it through the appointment of a governor-general in each of the colonies, but that was it, right? And they raised their own taxes and they paid their own bills, and so they had all that, and they’re used to deciding things for themselves. Now, on the other hand, this is like a huge decision, and nobody knows where it’s going to go. And we’re used to these British, and are they really so bad? And so, of course, it’s plausible to me, although we don’t really know that. Most people were very reluctant about this, and so the implausibility of it also demonstrates something, and that is: they really believe this, and they were prepared to die for it, and that’s the only reason it was. Independence is ratified, and then, of course, everything goes wrong for months. They did take Boston because Henry Knox went and got the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga, which Ethan Allen had liberated, dragged them across winter roads, got them up on a hill, and they now could shoot down on the British ships, and the British ships had to leave. But after that everything was disaster. They went up to New York because the British going up there.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: Now, here’s Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Valley Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, presenting a Hillsdale College CCA with the story of what happened next.

00:05:45
Speaker 4: The Empire is about to strike back, and a huge fleet arrives in New York. Ultimately, 40,000 soldiers and sailors in a fleet of 400 vessels. This is more people than in all of Philadelphia, the largest urban center in North America at that time. And there is Washington dug into New York and the high ground in Brooklyn. He’s completely out-generaled in what will be called the Battle of Long Island.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: The British just simply, completely outmaneuvered Washington. I mean, he was embarrassing, and he had to run his army down New Jersey, escaping with their lives.

00:06:24
Speaker 4: He’s lost most of his army to desertion. But what Washington had an ability to do is Washington had an — he was, I speak of him. He had a true genius. He wasn’t a genius like, let’s say, Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton. He was not a jitterly brilliant person, eloquent and a mind that could go anywhere. He had the ability to dial out the static of life, and believe me, as Washington retreated across New Jersey to the other side of the Delaware River, there was a lot of static out there about of naysayers. He had the ability to say, say, “Okay, what is the most important thing for me to do now?” And so there in the Delaware, he realized, “We’ve got to have some kind of comeback strategy here. If we’re going to do it, we have to shock them. It’s the only way we can turn this around.”

00:07:17
Speaker 3: In our first year, we’re going to have only defeat. So, on Christmas night, he crosses the Delaware and attacks Trenton, and he hoped to wake them up. He had a main man in his army; he organized all the boats to get everybody over, and of course, they were three hours late. So now it’s 10:00. Their hope of surprise, they think, is gone. And now Washington says, “We’re going to go on anyway, because if we don’t win here, we’re going to be dead by nightfall.” Well, they get there, and the Hessian soldiers (and they were from a German state called Hesse). They’d had a very nice Christmas night, and they were drunk in bed when the Americans got there, and they took the place (and hardly casually on the American side), and then something bad happened. The report comes that Cornwallis is coming down in relief. He’s got to stop Cornwallis at Princeville. And when he gets there, the American troops are in flight, they’re running. Washington didn’t say anything. He just rode his horse directly through the troops toward the enemy. When Washington got close to the British, he didn’t have any way to know if anybody was with him, but they had all turned around and fallen in line alongside Washington. And he pulls his sword out, and his horse is just walking steadily, and there’s a great volley, and Washington is shrouded in smoke. And then the smoke cleared, and there was a great cheer because he was just still on his horse in the same posture, still going, and the British — they basically just turned around and ran from him.

00:09:02
Speaker 1: And what a story you’re hearing. And imagine being there not knowing what was going to happen next, because no one did, as Doctor Arnn routinely points out to his students. The men then didn’t know what was going to happen, and they did risk everything — everything, fortune, and their lives, but not their honor, as Doctor Larry Arnn points out. When we come back, more of this remarkable story: how America won its independence and the stakes involved here on Our American Stories. And we continue with our July Fourth special here on Our American Stories, and for my money, one of the greatest stories ever told, not just a military story, but what happened on July Fourth and after, one of the greatest stories in world history. Let’s continue with two world-class historians, Nathaniel Philbrick and President of Hillsdale College, Doctor Larry Arnn.

00:10:30
Speaker 4: It’s one of the most amazing comebacks in military history. But what I began to realize with Washington, his genius was also primarily so political. He had to deal with Congress.

00:10:42
Speaker 3: So most of Washington’s career in the Revolutionary War was a tremendous mess. The Congress wasn’t paying them, and it wasn’t paying them because it didn’t have any money, and it didn’t have any money because the States wouldn’t give it any money, although they would promise to.

00:10:57
Speaker 4: And the great danger when it came to revolution and republics: that all of them would end with a military coup. The civil government in the wake of a revolution is inefficient, frustrating the military. Whether it’s Caesar, whether it’s Cromwell in England, or in the future Napoleon, someone takes control, and the dream ends. And this is what the Continental Congress was fearful of. So they kept Washington on a very tight leash. And the more successful Washington got, the more untrustworthy congressmen became. And the following year would come the Battle of Saratoga, in which, largely through the heroics of Benedict Arnold, America would score a great victory with Horatio Gates as the commanding officer. Meanwhile, Washington lost a series of battles, the Battle of Brandywine and Germantown, allowing the British to move into Philadelphia. This got the politicians to wondering whether Washington was the right person. His army is dug into Valley Forge that terrible winter, and there is an attempt to replace Washington with Horatio Gates.

00:12:14
Speaker 3: And he suffered with the troops, and he kept it together, and he kept his army in being.

00:12:21
Speaker 4: You know, he was one of these people. He was not necessarily the greatest military strategist in the world, but he was terrific at working with people, at seeing the big side of things.

00:12:32
Speaker 3: And when people see things like that, it’s printed in them. It makes them better because they aspire to such things.

00:12:39
Speaker 4: And his integrity was never doubted. He succeeds in getting through that terrible winter at Valley Forge, and from then on, particularly with a stellar performance, the Battle of Monmouth. He’s in. He is the unquestioned face of not only the Continental Army, but he is becoming the face of America. And, absolutely essential to all this, one of his best generals, Benedict Arnold, moves into the other direction. He ultimately decides that while Washington’s destiny to hold the country together, it’s his destiny to try to tear that country apart, and he unsuccessfully attempts to surrender West Point, where there are 3,000 soldiers and all sorts of armaments and ammunition. That is foiled. But America is at an absolute low point. Recruitment levels in the States were miserable. There just was nothing going on. But there was good news. In 1778, after that great victory at Saratoga, France had decided to enter the Revolution on our side. Cornwallis is dug into a town at the end of the point formed by the James and York rivers, Yorktown, and the trap closes around Lord Cornwallis. Lord Cornwallis is forced to surrender, thus delivering the victory that Washington had foreseen.

00:14:10
Speaker 2: And Washington could have been made a king after this great victory. Some people wanted him to be, thus ending our experiment and proving the suspicions of some members in Congress. Right? But that’s not what happened. So, what did?

00:14:29
Speaker 4: Washington has determined that he will surrender his military commission to Congress. When George the Third hears that this is Washington’s intention, he says that if Washington does that, he will be the greatest man in the world. And that’s what Washington did. He does that. He was so overwhelmed with emotion that he had to hold his right shaking right hand with his left while he delivered his speech.

00:14:59
Speaker 3: Yours, doctor, delivering that speech: “Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation, I resigned with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence, a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven. It is an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God. Having finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theater of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of all the employments of public life.” Put a way to end, you know, which has got to be one of the most consequential wars in all of human history. Had established the United States of America, and he was the man who commanded it, and everyone knew it was his strategy that had won. And everyone knew that it was his determination and moral force that it kept an army in being able to fight through many defeats and through impoverishment and lack of supply. And so he was the greatest man in the world.

00:16:32
Speaker 2: So this Fourth of July, remember the courage and sacrifice of our Founding Fathers to see through to victory a seemingly unwinnable and at times unpopular war. It’s a uniquely American courage that they displayed, and it’s something to be proud of. Here’s Gerald R. Ford reflecting on that for America’s Bicentennial.

00:16:52
Speaker 5: On Washington’s Birthday in 1861, a fortnight after six states had formed a Confederacy of their own, Abraham Lincoln came here to Independence Hall, knowing that in ten days he would face the cruelest national crisis of our eighty-five year history. “I am filled with deep emotion,” he said, “and finding myself standing here in the place where collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle from which sprang the institutions under which we live.”

00:17:32
Speaker 3: Today.

00:17:33
Speaker 5: We can all share these simple, noble sentiments. Like Lincoln, I feel both pride and humility, rejoicing and reverence as I stand in the place where two centuries ago the United States of America was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The world knows where we stand. The world, it is ever conscious of what Americans are doing, for better or for worse, because the United States today remains the most successful realization of humanity’s universal hope. The world may or may not follow, but we leave because our whole history says we must. Liberty is for all men and women as a matter of equal and unalienable right. The establishment of justice and peace abroad will in large measure depend upon the peace and justice we create here in our own country, where we still show the way.

00:18:48
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by Montay Montgomery, himself a Hillsdale grad. A special thanks to Nathaniel Philbrick, a world-class historian, and Doctor Larry Arnn, not only a world-class historian but a terrific teacher and leader of his own Hillsdale College, proudly supports this program, and we proudly have him as a partner. The story of the greatest man, the greatest movement, and the greatest document ever conceived. Here on Our American Stories. Our July Fourth Special continues.