He was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen. Saturday is George Washington’s Birthday, commemorating the 1732 natal day of the indispensable man who won the American Revolution and served as our first president, the father of our country.
As a surveyor, soldier, general, husband, stepfather, friend, president, farmer, innovator, inventor, and politician, George Washington was always excellent. His soldiers would have followed him anywhere, and his country entrusted him first with executive power, because they knew he could always be trusted to act with integrity, logic, courage, patriotism, and humility.
In the book “George Washington and the Irish,” Niall O’Dowd relates one story of Washington that illustrates how he was the sort of leader who always led from the front, at great risk to himself—and often to the terror of his aides and friends! Miraculously, daring as he was, Washington was never wounded in battle. And one time when Washington really does seem to have been preserved by God occurred at the fateful Battle of Princeton, part of the 1776-1777 winter campaign that was a turning point in the Revolution.
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The story was told by John Fitzgerald, an Irish-American officer who was Washington’s favorite aide and lifelong friend. George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s grandson, recalled, “We have often enjoyed a touching reminiscence of that ever memorable event from the late Colonel Fitzgerald, who was aide to the chief, and who never related the story of his general’s danger without adding to his story the homage of a tear.” Below is that story as recounted by O’Dowd:
Washington’s army, between Trenton and Princeton, encountered two British battalions and the fighting was fierce. The Americans were being driven back until Washington urged his steed forward to better direct his army’s musket fire. Washington was now out in front of his men and a despairing Fitzgerald watched as the bullets flew closer. Finally, Fitzgerald could take it no more and, convinced Washington would be shot by either friendly fire or British muskets, buried his face in his hat, unable to watch.
He was aroused a few moments later by Washington riding up to him unscathed. The tough young Irishman broke down in tears … Washington smiled and grasped his young friend’s hand and simply said, ‘The day is ours.’
Fitzgerald’s fear for Washington was highly reasonable. It was common for soldiers in the Revolutionary Army to aim particularly for officers, as noted by Fitzgerald himself in his Trenton journal entries, and the fighting was—as noted above—quite fierce. Indeed, Washington’s good friend Hugh Mercer was viciously and brutally killed at that battle by British soldiers who likely mistook him for Washington. And Washington himself, at well over six feet tall (in an age where that was unusual), a towering and eye-drawing figure, would have appeared a big and easy target on the battlefield.
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Yet Washington survived—not only Princeton, but the war. Fitzgerald lived to see his adored commander lead the Constitutional Convention and then the new country, as he was elected president of the fledgling United States. And as both general and president, Washington proved he had a moral character and a political genius to match his imposing physical stature.
Finally, Washington honorably finished off his public career by voluntarily surrendering presidential power after two terms, just as he had once refused to be king and resigned his military command, proving that the greatest leaders are those who prioritize their people over personal power and profit. Nor was he less stellar in his private life; in his will, Washington freed his slaves and provided for their education and maintenance, the only one of the slave-owning Founders to do so.
So on Saturday we honor the greatest American, the man without whom we would not have a nation, the heroic George Washington.
