George Washington: The Definitive Story of America’s First President

Lee Habeeb (00:00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people coming to you from where the West begins in Fort Worth, Texas asign from the Cherry Tree legend, which of course isn't true. Most of us don't know much about George Washington. To many, he's just a man peering at us from a dollar bill or a figure carved in marble. What we're about to do is take a look at the flesh and blood man behind the graven image. Narrating this story is veteran actor James O'Connor, who starred as Tommy Bones on TV's Gotham and appears regularly on Law and Order. In this segment, we'll be hearing from Don Higginbotham, author of George Washington Uniting a Nation. Let's take a listen.

James O'Connor (00:01:03):
The poet Robert Frost once remarked that George Washington was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power. Washington could have become King of America if he wanted to. Instead, America's first general became the United States first two term civilian president, something a world familiar only with hereditary monarchs, had never seen Napoleon. As he lay dying on the island of Saint Helena, condemned for having seized the power of an emperor, complained that his critics wanted me to be another Washington. Underneath the man who has become namesake to thousands of small towns, high schools, the nation's capital, and the forty second state, whose image is reproduced endlessly on coins, currency and stamps, and a huge bust carved into a South Dakota mountain, we find a man seeking to belong, longing for acceptance and respect. Parson Mason Weems, an episcopal clergyman and sometime bookseller, is the source of some of those pious stories about George Washington, like chopping down his father's cherry tree. The real George Washington is born in a modest farmhouse in northern Virginia on February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, the first child of a middle aged father and a second wife in the mid eighteenth century. Virginia is a province of the British Empire. Its sparse population of mostly British descent see themselves as Englishmen, subjects of the King, but the British see Virginians as crude colonists, second class in every way. Washington's father, Augustine dies when he is eleven. George inherits a farmhouse left in trust to his mother Mary, but the bulk of Augustine Washington's state, including the sizeable plantation at Mount Vernon, goes to his older half brother Lawrence. Unlike Lawrence, who's educated in England, George's formal education ends when he is fourteen. Lawrence convinces Mary Washington to send George to him so that he can teach the boy the ways of society. As George's surrogate father, Lawrence offers guidance and contact with the wealthiest and most prominent family in Virginia, the Fairfax family, which he has married into. The rough young man learns his social graces by quietly watching and imitating those in Lawrence's charmed circle. Acutely aware of his own lack of sophistication, fearful of social missteps, Washington develops lifelong habits of social reserve. He studies books on matters. He reads English magazines and translations of Roman classics so that he would have something to say at dinner parties. But to become one of the elite, George needs to make money. By seventeen, he is working as a frontier surveyor in the Appalachian Mountains. At eighteen, he buys his first piece of land.

Don Higginbotham (00:04:14):
Washington, like all Virginians, needed land. Land was the most valuable commodity in an Integraean society. They needed land to replenish their tobacco fields, which were out in for eight years. They needed land for speculative purposes, for a rainy day. It was the one form of inheritance they could pass on that would be of great value to their offspring.

James O'Connor (00:04:36):
The land west of the Appalachian Mountains bears a wilderness of inconceivable magnitude and unimaginable richness. Few Americans have seen it, but the British Crown wants it. So does their archrivals the French, and both have to reckon with the Indians who live there. Washington has surveyed it, and in seventeen fifty four he comes to fight for it. After all, as a soldier of the British Crown, he can rise higher in society than any mere surveyor. He is now twenty two six feet three inches tall, a major in the Virginia Regiment, and after years in the backwoods as tough as the terrain, a smoldering Cold war between England and France, fueled by conflicting land claims on two continents, hits a flash point in the Ohio Valley. In Europe, this conflict will be called the Seven Years War. In North America, it is known as the French and Indian War. Eventually, the French will be driven from America, but at such a cost that the British will raise taxes in America to pay for the fighting. This leads to the American Revolution, in which the French aids America. The French will pay for this with higher taxes, which leads to the French Revolution. Washington is sent out on his first assignment. His job to lead one hundred and thirty nine men to the forks of the Ohio River and build a fort there before the French camp. His only military preparation consists of fencing lessons and having read two books on the art of war. But the French beat Washington to his goal, and now his Indian scouts tell him that the French are sending a party to ambush. Washington leads his men on a night march towards the French camp, where he finds forty men sleeping. At dawn, he strikes. A few minutes later, ten French, including a French ambassador, and four Englishmen, are dead. The French court brands him an assassin. The French and Indian War has begun.

Lee Habeeb (00:06:50):
And you're listening to veteran actor James O'Connor and historian Don Higginbotham tell the story of young George Washington, and my goodness, he's so desperate, wants in to polite and elite society. And he doesn't only survey the land because that's how he'll get their land ownership. He's now prepared to and is about to fight for it. When we come back, more of the story of George Washington, our most important founder hands down here on our American Stories. Here aret our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told that we can't do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to our American Stories dot Com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American Stories and with the story of George Washington. And this time we're joined not just by James O'Connor, the actor, but also we'll be hearing from clare Mount history professor Bob Davidoff. Christine Meadows, curator at Mount Vernon, will join us too, and scenes from George Washington and John Adams the mini series of both. Let's pick up where we last left off.

James O'Connor (00:08:38):
Later at the Battle of Fort Duquain, Washington demonstrates that what he lacks in strategic ability he more than makes up for in sheer bravery when he has two horses shot from under him. Three years later, again at Fort Duquain, two groups of Virginia militiamen stumble upon one another in the wilderness and mistakenly open and fire on each other. Washington rides between opposing lines, knocking away guns on both sides with his sword. Fourteen are killed, twenty six are wounded. Washington isn't touched. At twenty four he returns a hero to his fellow Virginians. But when he seeks a commission as a full British officer, not just a Virginia colonial officer, he is rudely rejected.

Speaker 4 (00:09:25):
We are at war with France, and you, sir, were the man who fired the shot that started this war.

James O'Connor (00:09:34):
He resigns from the militia and protest denied advancement in the British Army. He realizes that if he is to make his mark in the world, he must do it as a civilian.

Speaker 4 (00:09:44):
What's so touching about his experience of the French and Indian War is that it was the making of him in a way that he did not expect. Instead of being the making of him as an element of the glittering gentleman's world of the British Virginia Empire, it was the making of his experience of human vicissitude and the forging of his character, and I suspect the beginnings of those personal feelings which made it possible for him to be a rebel leader, where once all he had wanted was to be an imperial guard.

James O'Connor (00:10:20):
Then, in seventeen fifty two, after having found the town of Alexandria, Virginia, George's half brother and father figure, Lawrence, dies of tuberculosis. George becomes the owner of Mount Vernon. He's got lots of land, but little money to work it with, and he is alone for ten years. He has wooed a succession of young women, all of whom reject him, some because he isn't rich enough, and some because they are put off by his restrained personality. Then George is introduced to Martha Custis, a twenty seven year old widow and mother of two. Martha is five foot tall with a pleasant appearance, is slightly plump, shy, and serious, universally liked and easy to talk to. She is also one of the most wealthy, marriageable women in all of Virginia. Her husband, Daniel Custis, has left her seventeen thousand acres of tobacco, hundreds of slaves, and several farms. The two only spend twenty some hours together before George proposes marriage. Within the year, they are married, having spent only fifteen days in one another's company. In marrying Martha Custis, Washington finally enters the world of the Virginia elite.

Speaker 5 (00:11:40):
She was extremely supportive of him. She complimented him in many ways. She socialized more easily than Washington did, like to talk with friends and greet them, whereas Washington. I think Washington was a little bit sham and he was. His size was intimidating. He used to frighten the children, but were told that Missus watching them grabbed him by his lapels and pulled him right down to her face when she wanted to talk.

James O'Connor (00:12:06):
Credit extended by British tobacco agents enables Virginia planters to live opulently, but credit also puts them in debt, and constant droughts keep devastating crop production. As tobacco prices fall, their debts mount. George and Martha face a dilemma. Washington faces economic collapse, but he's equally fearful of what others might think if he's unable to maintain his style of life. If I economize, Washington writes in a letter, such an alteration in the system of my living will create suspicions of a decay in my fortune, and such a thought the world must not harbor. Image is all important. Washington staffs his residence with fourteen servants and seven slaves, but unlike many of his contemporaries who defend slavery. Washington believes that slavery debases both slaves and slaveholders. Slave mark An Washington has the resources to pull himself completely out of debt if he sells all of his slaves, but he says, I refuse to participate in that practice of selling slaves. It's wrong. Jonathan Alton, Washington's longtime plantation, has attempts to sell off the slaves. Washington responds immediately, I gave you.

Speaker 6 (00:13:27):
No authority to sell any of our people.

Speaker 5 (00:13:28):
Colonel.

Speaker 7 (00:13:29):
You instructed me to cut costs because about drought losses.

James O'Connor (00:13:32):
I've told you before, mister Ralton. I will not break up families. The will beto sale.

Don Higginbotham (00:13:38):
By not selling slaves without your permission, we can go bankrupt, Joshuan load them.

James O'Connor (00:13:46):
Virginia law, of course, does not recognize slave families or slave marriages, but Washington does. Washington treats them like family, which is why after their release following his death, the former slaves come back and take care of Mount Vernon and his and Marfu's grave. Of all the founding fathers, Washington is the only one to free his slaves. But Washington is broke. He sees his and his fellow planter's problems as one of dependents on their British agents, the men who sell Virginia's tobacco in Europe and who purchase finished goods on their behalf in London.

Speaker 8 (00:14:27):
He was persuaded that they palmed off the shoddiest goods on colonials. All of this simply intensified his sense of anti colonial discrimination, this time within the context of the imperial commercial system.

James O'Connor (00:14:44):
Although Washington believes he grows the best tobacco in Virginia, he decides to stop growing the labor intensive, soil depleting crop and grows grains instead. He is soon selling his produce in Alexandria and buys finished goods from local importers and American manufacturers instead of buying through London agents. Within a decade, he is out of debt and a firm believer in American economic independence. As the British Parliament levies one burdensome tax after another on the colonies, Washington begins to see advantages in American political independence as well, and when British troops sail into Boston in seventeen sixty eight, Washington sees them as nothing more than tax collectors in redcoats. Soon, Washington joins Patrick Henry as one of the most influential members of the Virginia House of Burgesses. As relations between Britain and the colonies deteriorate, Virginia sends Washington as one of its delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. By the time the Second Continental Congress convenes one year later, fighting breaks out between the Massachusetts Minutemen and the British regulars, as.

Speaker 5 (00:15:59):
It recognize as Missus Adams of Massachusetts.

Speaker 7 (00:16:04):
I believe, says that the hour has come. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children while I live, Let me have a country, a free.

Speaker 6 (00:16:28):
Country.

James O'Connor (00:16:30):
It is no exaggeration to say that between seventeen seventy four and seventeen seventy seven Independence Hall in Philadelphia glows with more intellectual candlepower than has ever burned in a single place before or since. Ben Franklin, John Adams, his cousin, Sam John Jay, the men of the Virginia delegation, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton. And then there is George Washington.

Lee Habeeb (00:17:02):
And what a story You're listening to the story of George Washington. And in the end we learn that what propels Washington to lead this battle for independence had much to do with how he was treated after the French and Indian War. All he'd wanted to become was a member of the Imperial Guard. The British didn't see it. This would fuel Washington's streak for independence. And also what was happening financially, he thought as a result of how the British treated American businesses and in the end, so many of them agrarian. When we come back more of the story of George Washington, America's most important founder here on our American Stories, and we returned to our American stories and the story of George Washington along with actor James O'Connor, we'll be hearing in this segment from history professors Robert dowardoff, Ira Gruber, and Rosemary Zagarai and a clip from John Adams mini series. Let's pick up where we last left off.

James O'Connor (00:18:29):
To symbolize the depth of his commitment to the cause of resistance, Washington arrives in Philadelphia wearing his splendid old blue and buff Virginia military uniform.

Speaker 4 (00:18:40):
He wore the uniform because he knew he looked good in it, and because he wanted to be commander in chief. And he knew that if other people could see him in that uniform, they would see him as he saw himself.

James O'Connor (00:18:53):
In command, John Adams nominates forty three year old Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army, which will wage a war for national independence.

Speaker 9 (00:19:04):
What is required now is one able man to build and to lead this new continental honor.

Lee Habeeb (00:19:15):
And who do you propose of the Massachusetts delegate should lead this force.

Speaker 6 (00:19:23):
I have but one gentleman in mind, known to all of them as the president. I propose as commander in chief our most honorable industry and Delegate, the good gentleman from Virginia, Colonel George Washington.

James O'Connor (00:19:41):
He is elected unanimously.

Speaker 10 (00:19:44):
I am truly sensible of the high honor the Congress has done me. But I tell you now, I do not think myself equal to the command.

James O'Connor (00:19:56):
I am honored with Washington sees is a ointment as one ordained by God.

Speaker 6 (00:20:02):
Your Continental Army await you at Cambridge.

James O'Connor (00:20:06):
Said in his letters. He refers to the war as the cause with cause always capitalized, recognizing God's providence in their resistance. John Adams prophetically writes that Washington could become one of the most important characters in the world. Washington accepts the assignment, knowing that if he fails, he would lose everything he struggled so hard to gain. Ben Congress approves the Declaration of Independence Resolution Carriage, asserting America's right to choose their own government, absolving all allegiance to the British Crown.

Speaker 7 (00:20:43):
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary.

Speaker 4 (00:20:48):
For one people to dissolve the political band would have connected them with another.

James O'Connor (00:20:53):
It may have been Ben Franklin who said, if we don't hang together, we will most certainly hang separately. But it is Washington's neck that will feel the news first. There is no turning back happiness.

Speaker 11 (00:21:08):
When George Washington got the Cambridge to assume his new command of the continent, Alarm, all of his fears were probably reinforced. What he found instead of an inspired band of revolutionaries was a disorganized, dirty, undisciplined mob.

Speaker 6 (00:21:27):
I'd frolled the love of them, and.

Speaker 11 (00:21:29):
He was supposed to command them and make them an army and expel the British from North America and secure independence for the American people.

Speaker 5 (00:21:36):
Sir.

Speaker 8 (00:21:37):
The British are landing on Long Island.

Speaker 6 (00:21:38):
The battle is upon.

James O'Connor (00:21:39):
US New York seventeen seventy six. Washington is out numbered two to one.

Speaker 8 (00:21:47):
He grew during the war as a military commander, but at the beginning thom he showed a considerable degree of incompetency. For instance, at the Battle of Long Island, he left the end of his line open. The British were able to run around. They nearly catch his whole army and destroy it.

James O'Connor (00:22:04):
Washington loses New York, which begins a succession of losses up and down Manhattan Island, a skirmish at Harlem Heights, a defeat at White Plains, a disaster for Washington at Fort Washington, another disaster at Fort Lee. By November, his army has almost evaporated. Men have left or deserted to bring in harvests. Thousands have been captured or killed, many have fallen ill, and the British are chasing his remnant of five thousand across the New Jersey plane.

Speaker 8 (00:22:35):
By the end of seventeen seventy six, the continental army was melting away. The jig seemed just about up. Washington was in despair. He started to talk about having to go hide out.

James O'Connor (00:22:48):
In the West to his brother, Washington rights, I think the game is pretty near all.

Speaker 11 (00:22:55):
By December of seventeen seventy six, the countinittle Cause was very soon is trouble. Washington's soldiers were about to go home, Their enlistments were expiring, Many columns were beginning to take up the British offer of pardon. They were going over to the enemy. The revolution was unraveling.

Speaker 8 (00:23:15):
And then suddenly, at the very end of the year, in an a bold and daring move, Washington, with his small remaining army, swooped down on Trenton, New Jersey.

James O'Connor (00:23:29):
There are few places in America where history pivots around the character of a single man. Washington's crossing the Delaware River in Trenton, New Jersey is one of them. When Washington wins here, the tide turns with him. The watchword Washington has chosen for the Trenton attack is victory or death. Two four hundred American troops crossed the Delaware in the middle of a sleet storm on Christmas night, Captain seventeen seventy six. This whether or what the men's power.

Lee Habeeb (00:24:01):
Our muskets won't fight, then you must use your bayonet's Sergeant, Trenton must be taken.

James O'Connor (00:24:11):
Many things go wrong, but the genius of Washington's attack lies in the date of its execution. In their barracks, the enemy has been celebrating Christmas with rum and dale. As night comes on, so does drunkenness.

Speaker 12 (00:24:27):
Then sleep at Trenton, Washington had to try something new. Conventional military tactics had failed him. He remembered the guerrilla tactics of the Indians from the French and Indian War, so he and his men snuck up on the sleeping Hessian soldiers.

Speaker 11 (00:24:49):
Washington slipping across the Delaware, taking advantage of Hessians who had had too much to drink, surprising them in the morning, and winning a very small victory. It's not a great thing in military terms, but it was very important to the survival of the revolution.

James O'Connor (00:25:07):
The legends of barefoot soldiers leaving bloody footprints in the snow are not fiction. The tales of starvation, disease, malnutrition, and exposure at Valley Forge in the winter of seventeen seventy eight are not exaggerations. One soldier recorded seeing a dead body so covered with lice that it was thought the lice alone had killed the man. Even after makeshift cabins are built and the men are out of the freezing wind and snow, each century still has to borrow clothes from his bunkmate before his turn at guard. As the guard rotates, so does the clothing. But there is one thing not lacking in the American camps rum. It is calculated that rebel troops are consuming a bottle of day per man. When enlistments expire, Washington goes before his troops and offers a bounty to all who stepped forward and re enlist.

Speaker 12 (00:26:09):
The drums rolled. No one stepped forward. Washington couldn't believe it. He was dismayed, he was shocked. He was desperate. So he marched up and down the line, begging, pleading, conjoling his men to stay, telling them that the future of America arrested with them. The drums rolled again. This time one man stepped out, two men stepped out, and at the end everyone who could stayed on.

Speaker 4 (00:26:42):
He could lead, he could inspire his men. They admired him. He looked the picture of a general. He was a responsible, careful tactician. I don't suppose any military genius, but he had the genius to.

Lee Habeeb (00:26:53):
Lead, and nothing could be more true. Washington may not have been the greatest military genius, a genius for leadership, and without it we wouldn't have the country we live in today. A series of mistakes and eerrors in the beginning, not the greatest strategist, let alone tacticianer and then comes the master stroke in Trenton and getting that much needed victory when we come back more of the story of our founding father, George Washington. Here on our American stories, and we returned to the story of George Washington, and with James O'Connor the narrator, we'll be hearing again from Ira Gruber and Christine Meadows. Let's pick up where we last left off.

James O'Connor (00:27:55):
Deeply feeling the plight of his men, Washington constantly hounds the continent for Congress for supplies, trying to shame them by appealing to their sense of patriotism. Congress's typical response is to give Washington permission to commandeer what he needs from those living near his stationed troops. Washington refuses this invitation to rob his fellow citizens at the point of a bayonet, arguing that to do so will alienate the very people in whose name the struggle has been undertaken. A struggle also exists with his generals. Washington has as much trouble with some of them as he does with the British.

Speaker 11 (00:28:33):
Men like Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, men who'd been officers in the British Army, thought Washington was a bumpkin, someone who didn't know anything about an army or how to run a war, and they caused George a tremendous amount of trouble. They conspired, They talked behind his back, they spoke to members of Congress. They tried to discredit him, but in the end he met them with patience and persistence, and their own incompetence ruined, and George survived and they didn't.

James O'Connor (00:29:04):
Throughout his career, he appears touched by God. On horseback, he leads charges into the thick of battle, wilfully exposing himself to cannon and musket fire, strolling through a hell of shot, yet not once does a bullet or shrapnel ever even graze him. In April seventeen eighty one, a British warship sails up the Potomac and trains her guns on Washington's cherished home, Mount Vernon. Most of Washington's Virginia now lay under British control. The governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, begs Washington to come home and save his state. Washington declines.

Speaker 4 (00:29:44):
When Jefferson called upon Washington to defend his home and his state, he was talking to a Washington who no longer existed. Washington's allegiance was no longer to the country he had grown up in in much Virginia, but was an allegiance to the future.

James O'Connor (00:30:05):
Washington's record on the battlefield is three wins, nine losses, and one tie, which is no source of pride. If we succeed, we have a chance to end the war here. But the best battle to win is the last one.

Speaker 7 (00:30:21):
Surprise and terror will be your main weapons.

James O'Connor (00:30:24):
And Washington indoors long enough to win it. The three week siege at Yorktown. This is where the Revolutionary War ends. On October nineteenth, seventeen eighty one, when British General Cornwallis asks for the terms, Washington replies that the same honor should be granted to Cornwallis's surrendering army as was granted to the American garrison of Charleston. The point is not lost on Cornwallis. When Charleston fell to the British in seventeen eighty, the British refused to grant the Americans the honors of war, treating them as rebels and not as a legit, jitimate army. Washington now demands the same humiliation of Cornwallace, but Cornwallis claims illness and sends a stand in to the surrender ceremony.

Lee Habeeb (00:31:12):
Corn Wallace is in disposed, I am second in command.

James O'Connor (00:31:17):
In an attempt at insult the British stand in tries to hand over Cornwallis's sword to a French officer who had fought with the Americans, but the Frenchman refuses, directing him instead to Washington. Washington also refuses. He orders the Englishman to surrender Cornwallis's sword to General Lincoln.

Speaker 6 (00:31:39):
General Lincoln will accept the surrender.

James O'Connor (00:31:42):
Who was the humiliated American commander at Charleston, Mysore During his campaign against the British. Washington is always outnumbered, typically outgunned, and always short on supplies, weapons, wagons, horses, and boats. Yet he repeatedly slips the British news, choosing strategic retreat over honorable defeat. He doggedly wears his enemy down. The British lose the war, not so much because the Americans under Washington defeat them on the battlefield, but because General George Washington does not give up or go away. But Washington's most important performance has yet to occur.

Speaker 4 (00:32:30):
Let me set the scene. It's the end of the war. Washington's generals and his high staff officers are disgruntled. They haven't been paid. They don't trust the Congress. They're not so sure that it's such a good idea to give over control of this new nation to this bunch of squabbling politicians. Many among them wanted Washington to assume greater power, in fact, maybe dictatorial powers.

James O'Connor (00:32:59):
His officers plan a meeting at their headquarters on the night of March fifteenth, seventeen eighty three.

Speaker 4 (00:33:05):
They know how you feel, sir, so they do not want you there. At the secret meeting.

James O'Connor (00:33:11):
They will debate a move against Congress to demand their back pay Congress at gunpoint if necessary. Washington knows he has to confront them. He begins writing a speech he agonizes over every sentence and every word.

Speaker 12 (00:33:26):
He was ripped apart inside. He had suffered with these men. He'd watch them die, He'd watch them be wounded for their country. He knew what they had given up, he knew how Congress had mistreated them, and a part of him was attracted by their offer to be a kind of king. And he knew for certain that if he gave in to their offer, if he gave into the allure of power, not only would he betray his country, but he would also betray the reputation and the honor that had been so hard for him to attain.

James O'Connor (00:34:01):
He rides alone to the meeting. As he enters the building, the angry officers are stunned, but he sees no smiles, and there is no applause as he stands before them and begs them not to open the floodgates of civil war, which would surely drown the new nation and blood.

Speaker 8 (00:34:19):
If you will not lead to their stand aside, and if you try to silence me, you are asking for a nation of which freedom of speech is taken away.

James O'Connor (00:34:27):
He knows he is failing, so he decides to read a copy of a letter from Congress, once again promising payment it might work where his eloquence has not. He holds the letter in front of him and begins to read.

Speaker 7 (00:34:41):
I have a letter from a member of Congress.

James O'Connor (00:34:43):
But something is wrong. The officers draw closer. Then Washington takes out a pair of glasses and puts them on. No one in the audience has ever seen him in his glasses. Before the officers are shocked. Washington looks out at the men and speaks.

Lee Habeeb (00:35:04):
Can you will permit me to put on my spectacles?

Speaker 5 (00:35:06):
For I have not only grown gray, but almost blind in surface.

Speaker 8 (00:35:15):
In my country?

James O'Connor (00:35:17):
With this, he brings them to tears. He steps down from the stage and moves slowly towards the door. The conspiracy collapses. All that is left are the formalities of history.

Speaker 12 (00:35:31):
He knew that his glasses would be a symbol of his own weakness and vulnerability, and he hoped, he hoped that this would persuade his men that by betraying their country in this manner, they will also betraying him personally.

Speaker 4 (00:35:49):
It's high political acting. But what he did was he staged that performance in order to rescue control of the new government from a disgruntled military and to return it to civilian power. Or it belongs. And in that moment we have fused the extraordinary political performance of George Washington, the ambitious would be leader, and the principles about politics and about civilian rule which restrained him even in the moment of his highest acting.

James O'Connor (00:36:25):
Nine months later, Washington surrenders his commission and his army to Congress. The grand irony of his life, which in the beginning was based on acquisition, is that he did not secure the reputation he sought until he gave something up power. President Abraham Lincoln once said, to add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. The path of George Washington's life is one from frontier to capital. It is one of our greatest American stories. Those who helped create the new nation none are more deserving of the title Founding Father.

Lee Habeeb (00:37:11):
Done a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to our narrator James O'Connor, a terrific actor you know from his work in Gotham Law and Order and so many other parts. And also a special thanks to Don Higginbotham to Bob Davidoff and to Christine Meadows of Mount Vernon. And if you ever get a chance and you're in and around the Washington, DC area visiting, go to Mount Vernon. It's a terrific place. You will not regret it. The special thanks also to Rice University, the UCLA Film and TV Archive, and Claremount University for their contributions to this story. And my goodness, Washington just win the war. He also ended a potential coup by his own military with a masterful performance in Newburgh, and then in the end surrendered his commission, establishing the idea of civilian control of our military. The story of our founding father, George Washington. Here on our American Stories