Four American Leaders | Page 8

Posterity has given him first place because of the way in which he conceived and performed his duties; it will judge the leaders of the present generation by the same standard, whatever their theories about human rights.
Having said thus much about contrasts, let me now turn to some interesting resemblances between Washington's times and our own. We may notice in the first place the permanency of the fighting quality in the English-American stock. Washington was all his life a fighter. The entire American people is to-day a fighting people, prone to resort to force and prompt to take arms, the different sections of the population differing chiefly in regard to the nature and amount of the provocation which will move them to violence and combat. To this day nothing moves the admiration of the people so quickly as composure, ingenuity, and success in fighting; so that even in political contests all the terms and similes are drawn from war, and among American sports the most popular have in them a large element of combat. Washington was roused and stimulated by the dangers of the battlefield, and utterly despised cowards, or even men who ran away in battle from a momentary terror which they did not habitually manifest. His early experience taught him, however, that the Indian way of fighting in woods or on broken ground was the most effective way; and he did not hesitate to adopt and advocate that despised mode of fighting, which has now, one hundred and fifty years later, become the only possible mode. The Indian in battle took instantly to cover, if he could find it. In our Civil War both sides learned to throw up breastworks wherever they expected an engagement to take place; and the English in South Africa have demonstrated that the only possible way to fight with the present long range quick-firing guns, is the way in which the "treacherous devils," as Washington called the Indians, fought General Braddock, that is, with stratagem, surprise, and ambuscade; with hiding and crawling behind screens and obstacles; with the least possible appearance in open view, with nothing that can glitter on either arms or clothes, and with no visible distinction between officers and men. War is now a genuinely Indian performance, just as Washington saw one hundred and fifty years ago that it ought to be.
The silent Washington's antipathy to the press finds an exact parallel in our own day. He called the writers of the press "infamous scribblers." President Cleveland called them "ghouls." But it must be confessed that the newspapers of Washington's time surpassed those of the present day in violence of language, and in lack of prophetic insight and just appreciation of men and events. When Washington retired from the Presidency the Aurora said, "If ever a Nation was debauched by a man, the American Nation has been debauched by Washington."
Some of the weaknesses or errors of the Congresses of Washington's time have been repeated in our own day, and seem as natural to us as they doubtless seemed to the men of 1776 and 1796. Thus, the Continental Congress incurred all the evils of a depreciated currency with the same blindness which afflicted the Congress of the Southern Confederacy and the Union Congress during the Civil War, or the Democrat-Populist party of still more recent times. The refusal of the Congress of 1777 to carry out the agreement made with the Hessian prisoners at Saratoga reminds one of the refusal of Congress, in spite of the public exhortations of our present Executive, and his cabinet, to carry out the understanding with Cuba in regard to the commercial relations of the island with the United States. In both cases the honor of the country was tarnished.
The intensity of party spirit in Washington's time closely resembles that of our own day, but was certainly fiercer than it is now, the reason being that the questions at issue were absolutely fundamental. When the question was whether the Constitution of the United States was a sure defence for freedom or a trap to ensnare an unsuspecting people, intensity of feeling on both sides was well-nigh inevitable. During Washington's two administrations a considerable number of the most eminent American publicists feared that dangerous autocratic powers had been conferred on the President by the Constitution. Washington held that there was no ground for these fears, and acted as if the supposition was absurd. When the question was whether we should love and adhere to revolutionary France, or rather become partisans of Great Britain--the power from which we had just won independence--it is no wonder that political passions burnt fiercely. On this question Washington stood between the opposing parties, and often commended himself to neither. In spite of the tremendous partisan heat of the times, Washington, through