Washington: The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

“The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions of the men,” Washington cried out, “melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy provided that would contribute to the peoples’ ease.… If bleeding, dying! would glut their insatiate revenge, I would be a willing offering to savage fury, and die by inches to save a people!”

The writen word of a man who only had an elementary school education.

As was again to be the case during much of the Revolution, the amazing thing was not that Washington failed to do better, but that he managed to keep from being discharged as a failure, that he managed to keep an army in the field at all. Washington’s greatest strength was the passionate allegiance of his officers.

As his character and his world view expanded, more meanings became clear to him. He accurately defined his failures and worked out the reasons why he had failed. The results of this protracted self-education were to prove of the greatest importance to the creation of the United States.