The American Story

by David M. Rubenstein

  How close did the world come to its first nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how did John F. Kennedy devise a successful solution to this crisis?

  Why did it take a hundred years after the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments for the U.S. to really address the civil rights of African Americans, and was Martin Luther King Jr. the indispensable leader of this effort?

  Why did LBJ—a Texas native and close friend of the Senate’s leading segregationists—decide to push through Congress the 1964 Civil Rights Act when he knew that it could impair the Democrats’ electoral prospects in the South for generations to come?

  The interviews included here have been updated as needed and edited for clarity and length, with the approval of the authors.

  All royalty revenues from sales of this book will be donated to the Library of Congress’s Literacy Awards, a program I worked with the Library to create and fund in 2013.

  Enough about the background. Now on to the interviews. I hope that you will enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed doing the interviews on which it is based; that you will find the conversations to be enjoyable and memorable; and that you will be spurred to learn more about American history.

  David M. Rubenstein

  April 2019

  1 JACK D. WARREN JR.

  on George Washington

  “Our national independence is Washington’s legacy.”

  BOOK DISCUSSED:

  The Presidency of George Washington (U. of Virginia Press, 2002)

  We don’t lack for George Washington scholars. The United States has an abundance of them, and their books have together given a relatively full rendering of the Revolution’s indispensable man—the man of whom it was said at his funeral that he “was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

  Like many Americans, as a youth I was taken by my parents to Mount Vernon. That began my own lifelong admiration for our first president, the only Founding Father to free his slaves at his death.

  When I took my own son, then about eight years old, to visit Mount Vernon, he saw a large twig on the ground and asked if that was a part of the cherry tree that Washington had cut down as a young boy. Although the cherry-tree story is a myth, I could not destroy the illusion for an eight-year-old. I replied that I could not tell a lie and that it indeed had been a part of the cherry tree.

  I asked Jack Warren to do the interview on George Washington because Jack has an encyclopedic knowledge of our first president, having devoted much of his adult life to studying him. His book on Washington’s conduct as president is an excellent look at how Washington essentially invented the office and established traditions and practices still in use more than two hundred years later.

  Jack has devoted his career to promoting the memory of Washington and the American Revolution. For a good number of years, Jack served as an editor for The Washington Papers, a project still ongoing under the auspices of the University of Virginia. He fought successfully to save the site of Washington’s childhood home. Today, Jack leads the American Revolution Institute, a public nonprofit created to ensure that all Americans understand and appreciate the achievements of the American Revolution. He is also the executive director of the Society of the Cincinnati. (The modern members of the society are descendants of Washington’s officers.)

  Although there were no Rubensteins who served as officers in the Revolutionary War, a few years ago I was made an honorary member of the Delaware chapter of the society. Through the society, and through events at its headquarters (Anderson House in Washington, D.C.), I have interviewed Jack more than a few times. His affection and respect for Washington and his knowledge of Washington’s life are unmatched, as is apparent in the interview.

  In our conversation, Jack Warren makes clear why George Washington was easily the first among equals of the Founding Fathers. On three occasions, he left the tranquility and comfort of Mount Vernon to help his fellow citizens, fulfilling a role that no one else in the colonies (and later the country) could have done as well, if at all.

  First, he led the American troops in battle against the seemingly invincible British. (Few Americans had Washington’s military experience.) Second, he presided over the Constitutional Convention, an assemblage unlikely to have even occurred, much less succeeded, without his presence. Third, as the first U.S. president, he ensured the new American government would work, and set the precedents that have helped guide his forty-four successors so far.

  As Jack recounts, Washington was able to achieve these three feats not because of an engaging, back-slapping, hail-fellow-well-met personality. Standoffish, if not regal, in bearing and demeanor, he was more than a bit distant from his colleagues and even his fellow Founding Fathers. He led not through a dynamic, engaging personality but through example. He set a high bar for himself and met or exceeded it. Others saw this and followed his lead.

  But Washington’s greatest legacy was his willingness to give up power. Generals who led military victories typically became rulers for life if they could. Washington returned to Mount Vernon at the end of the Revolutionary War, content to resume the life of a gentleman farmer and plantation owner. He could readily have had a third term and presumably served as president until his death, but he chose the opposite course. He retired to his home and gave up all his government power.

  Back at Mount Vernon, Washington lived only two and a half more years. He could have lived longer had he been less hospitable: after riding several hours through a rainstorm, he arrived home drenched and cold, but refused to change clothes and keep his dinner guests waiting. The result was a swollen epiglottis, difficulty in breathing, and a failed effort to address the problem by bloodletting (i.e., cutting veins to let the “bad blood” out of the body). That shortly produced shock, and ultimately death. Jack relates the unfortunate outcome in the interview.

  Interestingly, Jack notes, Washington had two uncommon provisions in his will. First, he arranged for his slaves to be emancipated after his death (the only Founding Father to do so). Second, he asked not to be buried for two days. In those days, doctors left something to be desired, and they sometimes authorized patients to be put in coffins before death had actually occurred. Washington was, in fact, dead before being placed in his coffin.

  * * *

  MR. DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): Of all the Founding Fathers, the one who still commands the most admiration and respect is probably George Washington. Why is that?

  MR. JACK D. WARREN JR. (JW): George Washington led the Revolution for our independence. Without him, our revolution would have failed. Our national independence is Washington’s legacy. We are sitting in this city in the greatest country in the history of the world, in the greatest republic since the fall of the Roman Republic, as a consequence of Washington’s actions.

  DR: George Washington grew up in what’s now called Mount Vernon—named, ironically, after a British admiral. Washington’s older half brother was an officer in the British navy, is that right?

  JW: Washington moved around as a child, but when he was a teenager, he spent a lot of time at Mount Vernon, which was the home of his half brother Lawrence Washington. Lawrence was an officer in the Virginia colonial militia and served as a volunteer officer under Admiral Edward Vernon in an attack on Cartagena in a brief naval war between Britain and Spain, oddly named the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

  DR: So his brother named Mount Vernon.

  JW: He did. He had admired Admiral Vernon. George Washington later inherited Mount Vernon, but he never changed the name, and so lived in a house named for a hero of the British Empire.

  DR: George Washington wanted to be an officer in the British military at one point?

  JW: Lawrence thought George might become an officer in the Royal Navy, but there is no evidence George ever warmed to the idea. When he was in his twenties, George Washington wanted to secure an appointment as an officer in the regular British army.

  DR: And he was rej
ected?

  JW: He played an important role as a Virginia militia officer in the French and Indian War and came to the notice of regular British army officers—including men he would later fight during the Revolutionary War. He realized then that the British army offered no real opportunities for a colonial and that his ambition was never going to be realized.

  DR: Washington does do some fighting in the French and Indian War of 1754 to 1763 and gets a reputation. Then he’s elected to the Continental Congress—the governing assembly in Philadelphia, made up of delegates from the thirteen colonies—and serves as leader of the American forces during the Revolution. Why did they pick George Washington, who wasn’t that famous a military tactician or general? Why did the Continental Congress say, “We want you to lead the troops in the American Revolutionary War”?

  JW: He was the best man available. He was a Virginian. The Revolution had begun in Massachusetts, and most of the early fighting was in New England. Congress realized it needed somebody from outside New England to lead the army. Although George Washington had never led more than a couple of hundred men, he was the most experienced military leader in Virginia, the largest of the colonies. Moreover, Washington had the bearing of a soldier. He stood out.

  DR: Because he was six foot two?

  JW: Yes, but much more than that. Because he commanded respect. In the weeks after the fighting at Lexington and Concord, Congress debated how to respond. George Washington said very little in those debates. He was never much of a public speaker. But he appeared each day in his Virginia regimental uniform, as if to say, “A war for the liberty of America has begun. We must fight, and I am prepared to do it.”

  DR: People say that when they asked him, “Why don’t you be the leader of our troops in the Revolutionary War?” he said, “No, I don’t want to do it.” Finally he said okay, and it turned out he had already brought all of his uniforms up from Mount Vernon. Is that true?

  JW: He was modest, which is one of the things people admired about him. In accepting the command, he said, “I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”

  But if I could be a fly on the wall, one of the scenes I would like to see is Washington packing his military uniform for the trip to Philadelphia. Surely Martha knew he was taking his uniform, and what this might mean.

  After he had accepted command of the Continental Army, he wrote a letter to her, one of the only letters he wrote to her that survives. “You may believe me, my dear Patsy,” he began, “when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity.… But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking of it, is designed to answer some good purpose.”

  It’s a charming letter, but the idea that he had tried to avoid the appointment is not true. He wanted it. He just didn’t imagine that the war would last for eight years, and that in those eight years he would see Mount Vernon only once, for a single night, when he was on his way to Yorktown.

  DR: How old was he when he became the general of the American forces in the Revolutionary War?

  JW: He was just forty-three.

  DR: The same age as John Kennedy was elected president.

  JW: We are used to thinking of Washington as a mature man—a man in his late fifties or sixties, as he was when the most familiar portraits were painted. But in 1775 he was a robust young man in the prime of his life. He was a great horseman, a fine dancer, and a gifted athlete.

  DR: He was robust and athletic, but he had not been educated, right? No college, no high school, no grade school.

  After leading American troops to victory in the Revolution, George Washington served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that oversaw the creation of the U.S. Constitution, establishing a federal system for the newly independent country.

  JW: Washington had had as much education as a typical planter in his station. His formal education ended when he was about fourteen. Our thinking about his education is skewed, because some of the other leaders of the Revolution benefited from a fine formal education. Thomas Jefferson graduated from the College of William and Mary, James Madison from Princeton, and Alexander Hamilton from Columbia.

  But some of the greatest minds of that century, and certainly the greatest Americans of that generation, were more simply educated. Franklin had little formal education. Patrick Henry was the most eloquent American of the eighteenth century, if not of all time, and he had no more formal education than Washington.

  DR: So Washington took the job and said, “I’ll do it, but I don’t want to be paid. Just cover my expenses.” Is that what almost broke the Continental Congress? Because his expenses were pretty significant.

  JW: Washington’s expenses were significant. Some revisionist historians try to poke holes in Washington’s reputation by pointing out that this was really a good deal. But keep in mind that Washington’s expenses as commander in chief included all the expenses of his military staff. He also had to pay the costs of espionage. There was no NSA, CIA, or military intelligence apparatus, and no congressional appropriation for intelligence. Washington managed much of that himself, and the costs show up in his expense accounts.

  DR: That’s a fair point. How many troops did he actually command in the Revolutionary War? Was it more than twenty thousand at any point?

  JW: At its peak, when the army was gathered around New York City in the summer of 1776, Washington had about thirty-five thousand men to defend America from the greatest military expedition any European power had ever sent overseas. Those thirty-five thousand included the Continental Army—the regular army upon which Washington relied—and short-term militia.

  DR: And many of those men were not well armed or well equipped. At Valley Forge, for example, one-third had no shoes. Was he always fighting with Congress to get them paid? How did he actually hold them together?

  JW: Washington was continuously struggling to keep the army together. The army was always underpaid. It was always underfed. It was always poorly shod. It was always short of arms.

  When the war began, we didn’t have a single factory for making muskets or a gunpowder mill capable of supplying an army. We didn’t have bronze for making cannon barrels or sufficient lead for musket balls. We had no workshops to produce tents, uniforms, knapsacks, and all the other things consumed in war. We never had enough money. Congress issued paper money unsupported by gold or silver, and it soon became worthless.

  Washington appealed continuously for support from Congress and from the states. He appealed to the patriotism of his men. He shared their suffering. He held the army together through the force of personality. People believed in Washington. The men who fought with him believed that he would lead them to victory.

  DR: He camped in Valley Forge during the winter. Why was it that when winter arrived, the troops just stopped fighting? In other words, the British said, “We’re not going to fight in the winter.” And the Americans didn’t fight then either. Why did they not think they could fight in the winter? It was too cold?

  JW: Fighting slowed dramatically in winter, but it rarely stopped. Washington kept patrols on the roads around the British army to prevent them from collecting supplies from American farms. Skirmishing went on all the time.

  The British were in an unusual situation, conducting a war of conquest thousands of miles from Britain. They were able to take American cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah, but they were never able to establish control of the interior. They were never able to live off the land. They had to depend on supplies brought from overseas. Moving supplies overland in winter was simply too arduous, so the British went into winter quarters and waited for sp
ring. Every year the British hoped that this would be the year they would bring Washington to bay.

  DR: In November 1776 there was a battle at Fort Washington, on the island of Manhattan, and almost three thousand American troops were captured. As general, Washington himself you could say was responsible for that. We lost several thousand men. There was a movement afoot to replace him as the general of the American army. Did that get very far? Did Congress lose confidence in him?

  JW: This was the darkest moment in the war. The British attacked New York in the summer of 1776 with some thirty-six thousand men, including German mercenaries, and a fleet of warships. Their goal was to take the city, crush Washington’s army, and end the rebellion in one swift campaign. Congress expected Washington to defend the city, but the task was nearly impossible. New York is an island city, surrounded by a maze of navigable waterways that favor an attacker who enjoys naval superiority. The British could move their army at will. They took the city without much difficulty, and they beat Washington’s army in a series of battles.

  Fort Washington, which is at the north end of Manhattan, was the last American stronghold on the island. Washington’s officers assured him they could hold it against a British attack for months. When the British attacked, the fort fell in a matter of hours. The German mercenaries, the Hessians, led the attack, and when they took the fort, they began slaughtering American prisoners. Washington watched through a spyglass from the other side of the Hudson. He knew that he had made a tragic mistake, and he quietly wept as he watched. Washington retreated with what was left of the army, fewer than six thousand men, across New Jersey, hoping to get across the Delaware into Pennsylvania. Congress fled Philadelphia, expecting the British to take that city as well. It looked at that moment like the war was coming to an end.