From the editor: Two men and a day

You know, I’m not even sure if President’s Day comes with a possessive apostrophe. The holiday consolidating the celebration of two American icons born inconveniently in the same month is just that kind of afterthought.

Yeah, government employees and school children enjoyed a day off. To the rest of us it was just more of the same. But George Washington and Abraham Lincoln deserve a little more.

To be fair, however, we’ve come to treat Washington as a marble man, a founder carved in stone and emblazoned on street signs across the country, devoid of real personality. Except for a brilliant film covering Lincoln’s fight to pass the 13th Amendment, Old Abe has suffered much the same fate—apart from the indignity of “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.”

A fun idea, I’ll admit.

Personally, I prefer the more interesting Lincoln, the one desperate to restore the union during one of this nation’s more trying periods. When he finally canned the last of his ineffective commanders in favor of George Gordon Meade, just before the Army of the Potomac met Lee at Gettysburg, Lincoln assured those willing to listen that the Pennsylvania general would “fight well on his own dunghill.”

Lincoln’s way with words included such magnificent passages as “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”  But he also relished coarse, salty tales and flashed a backcountry lawyer’s ability to reason through difficult issues.

In June of 1863, as Lee’s army trudged north toward the Battle of Gettysburg, the frustrated president sent a message to General Joseph Hooker urging some kind of action. “If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the Plank Road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?”

Those trained in the military arts continued to think in terms of territory and capitals. Lincoln understood, ahead of his time, that destruction of enemy armies—as well as a people’s will to resist—was more important than the Napoleonic chess game. And, yes, he achieved all those things history books credit him with, such as restoring the union and guiding the passage of that amendment finally ending slavery.

Washington viewed warfare in terms of armies rather than territory, as well. He quickly figured out that as long as he kept his Continental Army intact, in the field and willing to fight, the British could never win the war--no matter how much land the conquered or how many successes they claimed on the battlefield.

It’s a lesson easily forgotten, apparently.

Washington was, of course, a rare military leader willing to learn from his mistakes. After being chased across New Jersey in 1776 with British buglers blowing fox hunting calls along the way, he conceived of the bold counterstrike at Trenton. He followed this up with a dash at Princeton. When the Redcoats broke and began to run, he rallied his men with “it’s a fine fox hunt, my boys.”

We know him as the general in charge of the rag-tag Continental Army and the first president. But Washington’s contribution to this nation extends far beyond the battlefield and the chief executive office.  

The Father of Our Country was always mindful that civilian leadership mattered more than military command in a democracy. As the Revolutionary War was winding down in 1783, Washington learned many of his officers were planning on a march on the congress, where they would issue demands. Many, after all, had not been paid for their services.

The general walked into their meeting in Newburgh, New York and urged them to reconsider. He pulled from his coat a letter proving that many in Philadelphia were sympathetic to their plight. He glanced at it for a moment then pulled out a pair of reading glasses.

“Gentlemen, you must pardon me,” Washington told the would-be conspirators. “I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”

Many in the room began to tear up. The meeting dispersed. He had made his point, simply and clearly.

He did own slaves, the scourge of the era. But he also developed the strategy to win independence and lived the ideal that representatives elected by the people were superior to the military in the chain of command.

This last concern was one that could any founding father’s pantaloons in a bunch.

 A few years later, his concerns over preservation of order and landowner rights in the backcountry, added to the voices of others, caused representatives to scrap the weak Articles of Confederation and establish a Constitution and more defined governmental powers.

OK--so his story is a bit on the dull side.

Oh, there’s a tale about Charles Lee, a prostitute and Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge. But it’s probably apocryphal.

Besides, like Lincoln he’s just an etching on legal tender. That’s enough honor for the men who helped piece the United States together, right? No need for a special day.