Presidents Day and the Lessons of George Washington

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Matt Katz: The Presidents Day everybody, I'm WNYC reporter Matt Katz, filling in for Brian Lehrer today. I had mentioned a few moments ago that we were going to be talking about COVID variants, but I lied we're actually going to do that in the next hour. Right now, we're talking George Washington, the designation of the third Monday in February as Presidents Day dates from just 1971 when we won a three-day weekend between the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

It's sometimes a holiday more associated with mattress sales than the contemplation of our presidents, but this year with the impeachment trial of our most recent president concluding in the early days of our current president's term, over an insurrection in the Capitol drawn by the outcome of the presidential election, it's the perfect time to look back at our history and maybe see if in our beginnings, we can find insight into where we go from here. We're joined now by historian Alexis Coe whose book You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington is out now in paperback. Welcome, Alexis.

Alexis Coe: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Matt: Absolutely. First of all, your title there is no better title in the history of books than You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington so congratulations on that. George Washington-- I'm sure you've gotten plenty of kudos for it, but it pops off the page to say the least. George Washington set the tone for what a president would be and maybe most importantly, how a president would leave office. He left willingly, right? Tell us about how we left and why that became so important.

Alexis: Washington is often credited with the peaceful transfer of power that on-- We had a tradition for 233 years until now, but he actually gave up power twice and that's why the founders wanted him to be president and that's why this peaceful transfer of power was essential to our character. When Washington won the final battle at York town, he was waiting for the treaty of Paris to finish so that he could go home and he could retire and he kept writing to Congress.

"Tell me what to do." "Do you want to letter?" "Do you want a whole ceremony?" I will do whatever you want. I just want to be home by Christmas. The whole world was absolutely amazed. They had only known monarchs and dictators. I really focus on this first time that he gave up power because let's compare that to the French revolution. They executed their Monarch. We just have evicted ours 10 years after their revolution. Napoleon was installed 10 years after ours, George Washington was president.

Then fast forward to giving up power and he did that purposely after two years, the constitution didn't say after two terms, it didn't say specifically that amount of time. It just said that each term should be four years, but Washington at that point was quite a bit older and he really didn't want to die in office and he was right about that he died just a couple of years later and it was essential people said, "Okay, we're only going to serve for eight years," so much of this, so much of Washington's performance in early America was just followed by example out of respect.

Matt: Why didn't he want to die in office? Did he just want to go home and go back to Virginia with Martha or was it about setting a precedent and did he fear what would happen if he died in office?

Alexis: All of the above, he was desperate to go home. He did not want to be president. He had really been forced into it by the founders who said that, "Look, you went to the constitutional convention and your presence was basically you saying, 'Yes, of course, I'll be president,'" but he really did not want to die in office because that's what a monarch does. That's what a king does.

If that is the assumption that people will serve their entire life, that means that we'll basically have-- Someone could be elected at the age of 40 and be in charge until they die and we don't necessarily know that they would be in charge, so much of that was what we had fought an entire revolution to get away from. Parliament we feared had too much control over the King and so that was essential.

He really wanted to set the tone. Also, he was completely tired of being president when he went into his first term, his cabinet was full of names. We still know Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and by the end of his second term, he was estranged from almost everyone except for Hamilton and Adams, because partisanship had really gotten out of control.

Matt: That's what he warned against in his farewell address, which he wrote with Hamilton's help and for those who know the song, One Last Time from the musical Hamilton by Amanda Gorman in her inaugural poem, you wrote after the January 6 riot that Washington warned about this thing that we saw happen last month in his farewell address. Can you expound on that a bit?

Alexis: Yes. This has been what's so interesting as this farewell address I've been now talking about for a couple of years, and I keep talking about different things. Usually, at the beginning of Trump's presidency, I talked about one of the warnings that Washington had issued when he left office, which was, "We cannot entertain foreign influence."

If we do, then we will be beholden to them and we will no longer serve American citizens. We'll be serving some other country, some other despot, some other dictator. Then, the second thing which I've been talking about a lot lately is, of course, he was really nervous about political factions, what they called it in early America. He actually is the only president who didn't declare a party until he left office and declaring it as an overstatement because it was really just him saying, "Yes, of course, I'm a Federalist."

The farewell address said that what will happen is if we let political parties get out of control, then people won't vote based on what's good for America. They'll vote based on the party and the party won't care about what's good for all citizens, for all people who, let's say, they're representative for all the people that they're supposed to represent. They'll only care about keeping power and if they only care about keeping power, then we're just as bad as the British because our idea of revolution was that we could then adapt to changes. We could adapt to the needs of the citizenry and if power rules, then we're just corrupt and we're going to fall into decay

Matt: Listeners, do you have a question about Washington or maybe another president for our guest historian, Alexis Coe she's written a Washington biography, You Never Forget Your First. Has your thinking about how we celebrate past presidents changed in the last few years? Do you have some other questions about how to look at the legacy of George Washington call in at 646-435-7280, that's 646-435-7280, you can also tweet us at @BrianLehrer. Alexis, we can look to George Washington for a model of how to leave the presidency, but his name was just removed from a school in San Francisco because he was a slave owner, I'm wondering how you reconcile these perspectives on his legacy in 2021.

Alexis: We have to remember that there's a difference, just an overall difference between confederates and founders. There's just been a ton of conflation in the last four years. confederates, if you took away the monument, if you took away the highway, whatever it is in their name, most of them would not be remembered.

A few would Robert E. Lee, for example, who is still, of course, on the name of Washington, the university, but the rest of them would be forgotten because they're not historically significant. Over time we have conflated who is historically significant and who is a role model? A role model is a personal choice. If you believe that Robert E. Lee should be your role model, have a monument of him in your backyard, which I understand some of them have ended up in backyards that have been removed.

If you take Washington's name off a building, if you take statues of him down in States like Oregon, places he's never been, or on the office side of a school in San Francisco, he will still be remembered. You cannot cancel George Washington. That's not the point. The point is to look closer at their legacy and who they were and to understand why there's this tension, why do we exist in this world where we can only celebrate him, or we can cancel him.

That is why we don't understand our country so much of today of inequality of white supremacy goes back to our founding era and we really needed ourselves to be viewed as pure and good. It was essential to our founding story. It was the story we wanted to tell each other. That's why we ended up with wooden teeth and the cherry tree, but anything you do when you take down a monument, whatever it is, it is absolutely hollow without some larger discussing, some outreach to the community, and most of all, massive curriculum changes because we do not teach this history.

We don't teach it well, we don't teach it in detail and we don't teach it in a way that people can engage. Hamilton was wonderful because it made this period exciting, but it was a creative endeavor. There are lots of errors or Hamilton has been sold as an uncompromising abolitionists. That's what Ron Chernow called him, but we know that he, in fact, did own enslaved people. What I tried to do in my biography is not end up at one of these ends of the spectrum, but rather just take everything as I saw it. If Washington on one day he interacted with Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and also the enslaved people who made his life possible, then we need to see all of that and we just don't get that in our textbooks.

Matt: Maybe keep Washington as the name of the school, but also give the students there a robust curriculum that both talks about the stories we've all heard about him, the myths within those stories, the contradictions in his political life and personal life as a slave owner, and as somebody who also created this great precedent for the peaceful transition of power, just put that all together and actually teach the students that in a proper way before you go ahead and just remove his name from the school, is that a fair assessment? A fair way forward?

Alexis: Absolutely, but again if there is a mural, for example, that depicts genocide, that Washington did in fact order, then maybe that mural should not be in an elementary school, what we should have and what is missing from the mass decisions that were made in San Francisco over the removal of these names and also the 1776 report, Donald Trump's answer to the 1619 project is historians of American history.

We know this from COVID, you need experts when you're making decisions that require expertise. There has been a fundamental lack of value placed on this and so we end up with just other lies or just mischaracterizations. In the 1776 report, which is now, it's archived, but it's no longer available through the White House--

Matt: This was the patriotic education project that Trump had tried to push in his last days in office, right?

Alexis: Yes.

Matt: That was a response to the time 1619 project, which had dated the country's true founding to the start of slavery, and that riled conservatives and this was his response, right? I'm just giving a little backdrop.

Alexis: Absolutely. There was not a single American historian on this commission about American history about the founding era. I'll just point out, there were so many errors, we don't have enough time this entire month to go through them, but I can focus on one thing, which is that they said that Washington emancipated all the enslaved people on his family's property. That was the wording in the report.

Washington didn't have the power to do that. Mount Vernon, at the time of his death, there were 317 enslaved people living there. Washington only owned 123 people in there. The rest belonged to Martha's family because she had been married before so they were going to her first husband's heirs. It's a complete misrepresentation and to even complicate it further, only one enslaved person, William Billy Lee was emancipated upon Washington's death outright.

Washington wanted Martha to keep maximizing value from the enslaved people and he didn't want her to have to face the reality that he didn't want to face which was, these people are going to be ripped away from their wives and their husbands and their children and their grandparents. They're never going to see each other again whether it's because of freedom for Washington's enslaved people, or because they're being split among five different heirs who live in five different states with Martha Washington's heir. It's really disingenuous to even say that many people were emancipated. It was just one.

Matt: Wow. If you're just joining us on WNYC reporter, Matt Katz, and I'm filling in today for Brian Lehrer. We're speaking to historian Alexis Coe this Presidents Day, and we're taking your calls. Jenny, from Prospect Heights. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny: Hi. How are you?

Matt: Good. Thank you. Thank you for calling in.

Jenny: Thanks. I've been reading your biography and I loved it so much and I wanted to thank you so much for writing from such a different perspective. I loved your talk about his thighs and a lot of other things. It's also really great to hear about the slavery. It's nice to have that perspective highlighted a lot more than even other biographies.

I appreciate it but I also wanted to talk about how George Washington-- You talk about in the book that he takes off his military uniform when he becomes president and how important that was to being a president and then yet later he took up arms against his own people, up until like a few weeks ago, the only president to do so. It's interesting.

Alexis: Yes, he could have possibly been impeached for that. What she's referring to is the whiskey rebellion. Thank you, by the way, for all the kind things that you said about biography. Those were all my goals. The whiskey rebellion was a rebellion where ironically people who had no voting power were being taxed and in early America. You had to own land.

You had to have a lot of other checkmarks before you could vote. Basically, it was what the founders had been complaining about, what the Boston Tea Party was about. Washington because he was a military man, he decided-- First of all, this is executive overreach because this happened in Pennsylvania and the officials there said, "No, we're not going to do this. It's not a real rebellion. They're just upset. They don't actually have money." They were still trading for goods. The amount of cash they had was limited so they literally couldn't pay the fines and there were some violent incidences in which people were-- Tax collectors were tarred and feathered, but there wasn't some massive rebellion as it was being over understood.

Alexander Hamilton got a little excited, Washington's secretary of war wasn't even there, he was looking at a house in Vermont. Washington decides he loves this action. He puts on his uniform, he rides out with them and when he gets halfway there, he decides, "Oh my God, I can't do this. I'm president of the United States, this already looks bad, I'm sidestepping the constitution in order to put down this rebellion and have the strong show of force in America." He turns around, by the time the army gets there, there were three people in this field.

They have a whole army. It's totally embarrassing, all the papers completely drag Washington and say that this is the most shocking thing he's ever done and it is a part of the general public for the most part turning against him, compared to what he enjoyed before, which was just total adoration, but the last state of the union that he gave Andrew Jackson is a young member of Congress, he doesn't even stand up to applaud.

Matt: Wow. Fascinating. We've another piece about Washington's history that folks might not know about from a caller. James in West Orange, New Jersey. Hi, James.

James: Good morning. How are you? I wanted to talk about the importance of this great, great man. We owe so much to him and that is his meeting in Newburgh, New York, to his army. When the army was mutinous and wanted to really revolt because of lack of payment from Congress, Washington was not originally going to the meeting, but then showed up and he showed up and spoke. One of the most moving things that turned everybody's attention was the author is quite right, he was a stunning man, he was large, he was larger than life, he was lionized all over the country.

Paintings were being done on him with halos behind his head and Washington stands up and as he's talking, he reaches in his pocket for his glasses which no one ever saw, the great man never put on his glasses and read the document and all cheers broke out amongst the officers and nobody would think of rebellion after that. That is a great man.

Matt: Thank you very much, James. Alexis, anything to add about that little anecdote?

Alexis: It's a really important anecdote. That occurred during that interim period that I had described earlier after York town, but before the treaty of Paris was finalized and we were looking to pay back our loans to foreign entities and get our government going before we were going to pay our soldiers and it's a very sad story of speculators buying up tickets and then paying them half the value or not at all and even at some point Abigail Adams, she's a really savvy businesswoman, and she wants to get involved and Adams is like, "No, I like you sell pins at inflated prices at the beginning of the revolution, but we're a country now."

He hears about this rebellion, he goes to this meeting and the reason it's significant is when he takes off his glasses, it's not just that they hadn't seen him, it's that when we think of the revolution, we sometimes forget that it was almost eight years, it was really long, and Washington had not been home. What he would write about during that time was, "My enslaved people aren't maximizing profits, I don't really understand what's going on. My mom is complaining about her much smaller plantation." All sorts of things are going wrong, but yes, he really had aged.

The way we see presidents age, at the beginning versus the end, it's a popular thing that everyone likes to look at and talk about, Washington two different sets of eight years that were very stressful. He did age his eyesight was pretty bad, his hearing was also bad. When he said, "I have suffered." It wasn't just the gesture, it was the entire speech, he didn't usually speak from the heart in that way.

He often relied on other people, like Thomas Paine, for example, who thought he was the greatest thing and then ended up writing an open letter trashing him later, but because he really spoke, and he said, "I've suffered too, I understand what you're saying, I was once a young man, I had not inherited a lot of money. I was struggling and all I wanted to do was get ahead by being in the military. It was the only option I had, and so I understand what you're saying, but it will happen and we have to look at the greater good here. We have won this impossible war. We have all suffered, and this is the price that we paid."

Matt: We're going to take one more caller before we let you go, Alexis. Susan in Ridgewood has a question. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hi, amazing book. I just wanted to ask you from a historical perspective, based on what you're saying Washington wanted a peaceful transfer of power, wanted to avoid a monarchy, and wanted desperately not to have leadership that only represented a few people or a certain group of people and not the entire country, would you not think that at this point, the Republican Party is exactly what he was afraid of?

Alexis: Absolutely, I wrote an op-ed right after January 6th, saying George Washington basically foresaw the Capitol riots. He hated political parties, the GOP is his worst nightmare. They are doing everything that he worried about, not just because of people like Trump, because of the mismanagement of the government, but because it's basically, it spells the end of our democracy. Now, we have to remember that while perhaps we think of these parties as only being democratic and Democrats and Republicans, that's not always been true. There have been many other political parties that have been at the height of power and then fallen.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the republican party who loves to claim Lincoln, but Lincoln had been a Whig, and that party died, he had nowhere to go, so he became a republican shortly before he was on the ticket for the presidency. That's always an interesting claim, too. Absolutely, you're right, I think he would be horrified beyond belief. He believed that if we gave the political powers-- Political parties only cared about power, and they only cared about maintaining it, that someone like Trump would come along, and it would threaten all of our institutions.

You have to remember, we're such a young country compared to so many others, and we've had stability, there have been some incorrect statements said about the Capitol. The first time I've seen a confederate flag or have read or heard about a confederate flag in the capital was on January 6th, 2021, even in the war of 1812 that didn't happen. The British invaded and the Capitol burning was actually not on purpose. They didn't want anyone to die, ironically a grand nephew of Washington died, John Lewis, but one person died, but they did not want to burn everything down that was accidental.

The British leader said, "I have nothing against ladies or letters," because, of course, the Library of Congress burned down. Yes, of course, this is all of our-- Not just Washington, all of the framers. They were a group of people who did not agree with everything that the other one said, but they knew in crisis, say like the revolution, that we had to band together to get through it. I do not see that today. We know that hasn't happened because we look at how our country is right now, almost a year into COVID.

Matt: We are living in history. Thank you so much Alexis Coe's book You Never Forget Your First: A biography of George Washington is out now in paperback. Alexis, thanks so much for coming on. Happy Presidents Day to you.

Alexis: Thank you. Thank you so much.

 

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