More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Washington undertook experiments.
As his carpenters hewed poplar boards, he made a work-time study more suited to the twentieth century,
Opposition had become an absolute duty.
If only he could justify it “to posterity and my conscience,”
Washington would, he explained, abandon settled America to the British and inhabit the wilderness in a wigwam.
Washington was, in fact, for the first time making complete use of the advantages of his army. Men fighting for their own liberties did not need a perpetual infusion of supplies. Being devoid of heavy equipment and able to think for themselves, they could move twice as fast as a
Congress was more than ever outraged that Washington would not take what the army needed from the inhabitants at bayonet point.
In May, 1782, he had received from one of his colonels, Lewis Nicola, a
letter urging him to accept the responsibility of becoming king of the United States.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but
almost blind in the service of my country.”
Society of the Cincinnati.
And the states that had already paid off their debts were outraged at the suggestion that they should be taxed to bail out
reflected a dichotomy so deep in American life that it was to explode several generations later
the Terror—the rise and fall of the guillotine
Washington, who had seen men die in bloody anguish as Jefferson had not, was neither enthused nor encouraged.
Washington regarded the Democratic Societies as the creation and stamping grounds of demagogues.
He proved to be the only Virginia founding father to free all his slaves.
