Integrity, decorum, respectful discretion, and proper conduct.
This essay by FEE’s President Emeritus is drawn largely from his forthcoming book, Born of Ideas: How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America, available for pre-order now on Amazon.
If you want to do well in a job interview, or impress high society at a fancy cocktail party, remember this useful tidbit of 18th-century advice: “Rinse not your mouth in the presence of others.”
A teenage George Washington copied that from a popular collection of maxims known in his day as “The 110 Rules of Civility.” It was number 101. With the earliest versions dating back to French Jesuits in the 1590s, that manual of good behavior shaped Washington’s character at a formative age. He was renowned in later life as a man of integrity who practiced the decorum, respectful discretion, and proper conduct outlined in that influential pamphlet. He certainly never gargled in front of anyone, so far as we know.
“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.” That was rule number 56. Washington seems to have lived up to that one, too.
My personal favorite of all the rules is number 110, the very last one, because it conveys what made Washington exceptional: “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.”
As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army throughout America’s eight-year War for Independence, Washington led the country to a victory that seemed beyond reach in the early stages. His lost battles outnumbered his wins by more than two to one. How did he manage to keep thousands of regular soldiers and militia on the same page for so long when few of them received more than a pittance in compensation while their families struggled in their absence?
To be sure, Washington was daring and audacious. Crossing the Delaware on a wintry Christmas night in 1776 to assault Hessian mercenaries was a master stroke. So was his plan five years later to lay siege to Yorktown and rely on French allies to bottle up the Royal Navy. Washington’s use of spies is legendary; he even forged documents in his own handwriting and deployed double agents to deliver them and befuddle the best British generals. Avoiding a risky “grand battle,” he skillfully implemented a strategy and the appropriate tactics to wear down the enemy. But on paper, it almost always looked like a British victory was the safest bet.
Washington’s greatest strength was intangible in one sense but very real in another. It was linked to the last word in rule 110—conscience. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “a faculty, power, or principle that steers toward what is right and away from what is wrong.” A person of strong character is a person of conscience who tries to do what he believes is morally good. Conscience is an inner voice, a moral compass. It helps form our character and guides our decision-making. A leader who holds his character accountable to his conscience possesses the ability to inspire and motivate. Self-discipline comes naturally to him. He sets a standard others can admire and emulate.
A leader with neither conscience nor character can only lead at gunpoint. His “followers” are usually looking for the exits. He is aloof, imperious, erratic, distrusting, and untrustworthy. Washington was just the opposite. To his men, he epitomized honor, dignity, principle, and patriotism. He lived and suffered with them. He never accepted any payment for his services. He rejected any suggestions that he seize power or pursue personal fame. His commitment to the patriot cause never wavered, no matter how dire the circumstances. He exuded grace, humility, and self-mastery. In short, he gained respect by virtue of his demeanor and behavior. This is what wins wars when the numbers, the money, and the firepower say that you can’t.
Samuel Downing served under Washington and echoed a common sentiment among fellow soldiers: “We loved him. They [the troops] would sell their lives for him.” Washington’s character inspired that intense loyalty and devotion.
In an essay on Washington’s generalship, historian Thomas Fleming noted this additional aspect of the great man’s leadership:
Perhaps the most appealing thing about Washington’s strategy was its strong link to freedom. It eschewed the militaristic idea of hauling every man into the ranks at the point of a gun. It rested instead on faith in the courage of free men. It was a realistic faith: He did not expect men to commit suicide in defense of freedom, but he did believe men would take grave risks if they thought they had a reasonable chance of succeeding.
Testimonies too numerous to count demonstrate how Washington’s conscience and character were manifested in matters large and small. One you may not have heard about involved a lost dog. It unfolded immediately after the British under General Howe inflicted defeat on the Continental Army at Germantown in fall 1777. Washington, incidentally, was a life-long dog lover. He owned at least 50 of them over his lifetime.
As the patriots tended to their dead and wounded, a small fox terrier wandered into their camp. It wore a collar bearing the name of General Howe. K.A. Wisniewski recounts what happened next:
Washington’s soldiers, weary and demoralized, saw an opportunity for a symbolic victory. They proposed keeping the dog as a form of retaliation for their recent losses. But Washington, ever conscious of the importance of dignity and honor, saw things differently. He ordered the dog to be returned to Howe, along with a short, respectful note.
Washington dictated the note to his aide-de-camp, none other than Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton (who would later serve as America’s first Secretary of the Treasury). It read:
General Washington’s compliments to General Howe, [who] does himself the pleasure to return him a Dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.
“The story of General Howe’s dog,” writes Wisniewski, “though a small footnote in the vast annals of war, endures as a testament to Washington’s character. In a time when conflict often reduced opponents to mere enemies, Washington’s decision to return the dog signaled a belief in decency that transcended the battlefield.”
Washington’s religious convictions surely help explain his moral decency. Though he never flaunted his faith, he was a life-long Anglican/Episcopalian who served his church as both a vestryman and a church warden. Because of his distance from Pohick Church in Fairfax County and Christ Church in Alexandria and his busy schedule as a plantation owner, Washington attended church only about once a month, but he often worshiped at the nearest church when traveling. As President, he attended church regularly in Philadelphia. He prayed frequently and encouraged his men to do the same, endorsed days of fasting and thanksgiving, and spoke often of “Divine Providence” and the Creator who gave us a moral code to live by.
Nonetheless, the 21st-century critic will say, “How can you claim Washington to be a man of character and conscience when he was a slaveowner?!” This objection is an illustration of “presentism,” the error of judging people of the past not in the context of their times—the prevailing culture and views and the actions of their contemporaries—but by the conventional perspectives of today.
The 18th century was a time of moral and intellectual awakening, a time when men and women in great numbers began to question the age-old, ubiquitous institution of human bondage. Some accepted it, never thought much about it, and couldn’t bring themselves to oppose it. Others were instant converts to the anti-slavery cause the moment they first heard its message. Most people were somewhere in between. Their thinking evolved over time. That’s how it was with Washington.
In a letter to Robert Morris in April 1786, Washington wrote, “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” His perspective on the issue had evolved substantially from the day he first inherited slaves at the age of 11, from acceptance to disapproval.
America is not exceptional because we had slavery. We are, however, exceptional because of the lengths to which we went to end it—inspired by the words of the Declaration of Independence.
Before the dawn of the 19th century, you could count on one hand the number of countries where slavery never existed. It dates back at least as far as 3500 BC in ancient Mesopotamia. This includes every country of the African continent. Indeed, even at the height of the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century, white Europeans almost never dispatched raiding parties into the African interior to capture people and enslave them. Local tribes did the initial dirty work by kidnapping people and then selling them to foreign slavers at dockside. Slavery of Africans by Africans within Africa was big business for centuries.
Slavery was so common the world over for so long that Haiti is credited with being the first nation in history to abolish it. And that didn’t happen until 1804! By then, eight American states had already abolished it (in the North and mid-Atlantic) or passed laws to phase it out. Vermont (not one of the original 13 Colonies) embraced abolition in 1777 when it was an independent republic, well before it became a state in 1791.
Under the Articles of Confederation in 1787, the American Congress banned slavery north of the Ohio River in the Northwest Territories. Only one member voted against it. President George Washington signed it into law.
The first African country to abolish slavery was the Seychelles, and that did not take effect until 1837. Human sacrifice was commonplace in West African states through the 1800s, and the great majority of its victims were slaves. The last African country to get rid of slavery was Mauritania, which formally ended it only 45 years ago, in 1981.
Denmark didn’t get around to ending slavery in its Caribbean colonies until 1848.
A single-digit percentage of kidnapped Africans ended up in North America. Nearly half of them were sent to Brazil, which finally abolished slavery in 1888, more than two decades after the American Civil War.
The patriots of the American Revolution, armed with the promise expressed in the Declaration of Independence, did as much or more to put human bondage on the road to extinction than any other generation anywhere. They refused to codify it by name in the Constitution. They included a provision that outlawed the transatlantic trade in slaves beginning in 1808.
“But didn’t the Constitution recognize each black slave as only three-fifths of a person?” you might ask. Yes, it did, but that too was a compromise for the sake of union, and it was only in regard to determining population for apportioning representation in the federal Congress. It was not a statement against the “worth” of black individuals vis-à-vis whites.
Southern slave states wanted all slaves to count in the census because it would result in greater representation in the Congress without giving slaves any rights. Northern states generally argued that no slaves should count toward representation because they weren’t free to vote. The Three-Fifths Compromise limited Southern representation compared to what slaveholders had hoped for.
In the middle of the 1700s, almost nobody anywhere regarded slavery as wrong or even unusual. But around the same time, sentiment on the matter was beginning to shift. By asserting that “all men are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence put America on the cutting edge of a nascent abolitionist movement. Opponents of slavery, including Frederick Douglass, used the language of the Declaration to point out the inconsistency and hypocrisy of latecomers to the abolitionist cause. He argued that both the Declaration and the Constitution were “liberty documents” that later generations of Americans needed to live up to.
Does anyone today know for certain that if he had been born in 1700, he would have become a crusading abolitionist? The odds are that you would not have traveled that path, because abolitionism was largely a 19th-century movement. It was inspired in great measure by the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” premise.
Washington put his life on the line for that premise. Later generations would have to extend it to its logical conclusion—ending slavery—but at a critical moment in world history, people like him helped us journey further in that direction than ever before. He was not perfect, but then neither are we.
That we had a man of Washington’s character and courage in the right post at the right time was a blessing for which Americans owe eternal appreciation.
Additional Reading
Slavery, Equality, and the American Revolution by Yuval Levin
Defending the Constitution: Why the Founders Couldn’t Abolish Slavery by Rob Natelson
How the Slaveholding Founders Really Felt About Slavery by Timothy Sandefur
Recognizing Hard Truths About Slavery by Lawrence W. Reed
The History of Slavery You Probably Weren’t Taught in School by Lawrence W. Reed
The Truth About Slavery and America by Jason Riley
Women and the Founders by Lawrence W. Reed
Locke or Rousseau: America vs. France by Lawrence W. Reed
The First State of the Union Address by Lawrence W. Reed
