George Washington, Our Greatest Leader

He was first in war, first in peace, first in the souls of his people. Saturday is George Washington’s Birthday, commemorating the 1732 perineal day of the essential male who won the American Revolution and served as our first chairman, the father of our nation.

As a geologist, man, general, spouse, father, friend, leader, producer, innovator, inventor, and politician, George Washington was generally excellent. His soldiers had had followed him everywhere, and his land entrusted him first with professional energy, because they knew he could always be trusted to act with integrity, logic, courage, patriotism, and humility.

In his book” George Washington and the Irish,” NiallO’Dowd relates a particular instance of Washington that shows how he was the type of leader who always took the lead, with great risk to himself and frequently the terror of his friends and aides! Miraculously, daring as he was, Washington was never wounded in battle. The fateful Battle of Princeton, a crucial part of the 1776-1777 winter campaign, was a turning point for the Revolution, which once truly does seem to have been preserved by God.

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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”. That is the narrative thatO’Dowd described below:

Washington’s army, between Trenton and Princeton, encountered two British battalions and the fighting was fierce. Before Washington urged his steed forward to better direct his army’s musket fire, the Americans were being driven back. A depressed Fitzgerald watched as the bullets flew closer as Washington was now in front of his men. Finally, Fitzgerald was unable to watch as he buried his face in his hat because he believed Washington would be shot by either friendly fire or British muskets.

Washington came up to him undisturbed, aroused, and waited for him a short while. The brave young Irishman cried out loudly as Washington grinned and grabbed his friend’s hand and declared,” The day is ours.”

Fitzgerald’s fear for Washington was highly reasonable. As Fitzgerald himself noted in his Trenton journal entries, it was common for soldiers in the Revolutionary Army to direct their attacks on officers, and the fighting was actually quite ferocious. In fact, Hugh Mercer, Washington’s close friend, was brutally and brutally murdered at that battle by British soldiers, who were likely to have mistaken 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. Fritzerald watched his adored commander take the presidency of the newly formed United States, first the Constitutional Convention, and then the new nation. And as both president and general, Washington demonstrated that he had a moral character and political acumatant to match his imposing stature. &nbsp,

Finally, Washington honorably completed his public career by voluntarily resigning from his military leadership position after two terms, just as he had once done when he had refused to be king and resigned from his position as commander of the military, demonstrating that the best leaders are those who place their people before their own interests and wealth. Washington freed his slaves and provided for their education and maintenance, the only one of the slave-owning Founders to do so, not unlike he was less stellar in his private life. In his will, he was the only one 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.

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