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Founding Father. Feb/97. Fatherhood has always been a mysterious and complicated position in family & society. It may only seem so to us in these waning days of the century and the millen• nium, but from :the most anci~!1t of texts we read .that the deeds & relatshps of fathers to mothers and children are complicate~onfusing. We hear much in our time of the increasing number of fath -ers who disappear f·rom the family, and of some of them who dutifully pay child support, which is a sadly inadequate a~tivity. Others escape thei~u.2~!igations by not marrying the mothers of their children, permitting those who take their place~~ commit deeds of domestic violence which are repulsive to us all. For all the difficulties, fatherhood remains a fundamental of a sound soci• ety, and it does not come easily into our skills. It is the result of moral traininK in personal resp~sibility~and an act of will to complete the_ assignmt that biological paternity pl~ces upon us. f The tit·le· Founding F 8ther is even more undefinable and complicated. We hi_storians like to speak of founding fathe~ in the pluralr, as if our land and its political and social unde rpdri• nings were created by ~tire generation. Yet to·those who lived in the generation from 1760 to 1800, the fonnative years of independence and the national republic, knew on]g on~ Father. He was, and theyknew him to be, The Founding Father. In fact, the title was applied in 1776, six months before <the Declarat of'Tndep , when a _citizen addressed~in a letter as "our political Father;'' the first mention of George .~lashington as Fathe·r of is country appeared in an almanac published in 1778, when tl'ie outcome of the wav for indepepdence was far from certain. Since that time, the acco Lade and tne appellation have become fixed, and final. The a ppaarance. last fall of •Richard Brookhiser's book Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washipgton, gives us some new insights and an app:eciation o~ the ·man)who, more than any other, bequeathed to all oi us~~ uiu1R & U·red m·t l1H oa~, this s:weet land of 1 iberty, of which we sing. The facts of his~ e are easily recited. He was born in 1732, on Fttb- 11 by the old calendar, which ;was during his life~ime changed to· Feb 22; he was ,born the first son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball, in Westmo·reland County., Va. All his life he considered himself badly educated, and many college grads who knew hi.mlJagreed with that j udgmt. But to o onsid.er the 900 1,0lumes in his personal library, and the copious cltations·from classical writers which grace his public and private correspondence, would suggest that both he and his c-0ntemporaries were mistaken. Ofrhis formal education there is not much to tell. Father Augustine hired a tutp , but('he) di.e.d when son George was 11, and for the ensuing six years the boy was put into the Ciire of rel:tr(ives-. When he was 15 his formal education was finished, though he learned enough ofTTBthematics ~fterwardUto do geometry and trigonometry to become a su.rveyer. No president except Andrew Jackson had so lit tle formal schooling, but his inte-lligence and judgmt and his readinglfmade of him a well-prepared leader for his rendez-vous with destiny •. By. his middf.e teen years he was practicing his profes• sion of surveyor, given commissions ·to mark and map large portions of the mountaj..nous and d:lnger• ous regions of the frontier. In 1753 the young man just into his 20s was assigned the mission to undertake a winter journey into the back country,tto what is now Pittsburgh, where reports in• dicated that a French contingent from Qu6bec had "encr.oached" upon Virginia 1 s terri_tory. Read• ing of that risky adven~ure continues to excite our interest and admiration; it was one of my earliest. contacts with the 1 iving past of rrry c ountry--how Washington fell into a rushing river . in sub-free&:ling weather, how with his few companions ha built a lean-to and started a-f ire, by which he dried his drenched clothing and survavad the pote.ntially lethal cold. At the headwaters . or the Ohio River he learned that the French had withdrawn to a more comfortaple position(fto sur• vive the winter; he decided that he must travel the. 60 miles of untracked wilderness to deiiver his message; when he me_t a l<'rench unit_· the commander refused to accept, it, and sent him and his companions another lOOr miles, almost. to Lake Erie, where the French official wrote a polite note declining to obey the Virginia governor's command to evacuate the premises. On the return,(E'i.?) horses,gave out, and he and his guide w~lked back to his starting-point. It was the first of ma~ actions that set him apart !rom other peopLe of his generation. His determination, his courage, his honesty, and.his judgmt, his.Tight ideas about politics and government, about human relation• ships, made him the leade-rd when a :eader was crucial, essential, to hj.s country's e.xisten ce as a free and independent new wbrld~ All his life he continued his education, from life, from exper• ience, learning by doing. Educat n mattered to him; all his l :Lfe, and even intQ his final will and- testament, he advocated ~.he est lishment and support of a National University that would train republican (Bmall r) ~eaders i ys the local, provincial academies could never do. He read widely, ~verything he could g&t; a isitor to his great house after he le.ft public lifeflre• ported in some amazement, tha~subscri d to ten ·newspapers. He loved the theatre, apd never missed a perfonnance, even paying to produce pay~ and pageaats at Mt. Vernon, and quoting from the p~pular theatricals of th~ 18th Cen in his itinge •. P-0litical discussions especially in1'er• ested him; the issues that accompanfed the Americ n war.t.for independence were expressed and de• bated in pamphlet&; not 1 ong ago an historian pub] ed a book of those diatribes and contentions it is worth turning the pages to see how our forefat s made their case for loyalty to the crown, or revolution to conserve traditional English & erican values. Washington mastered that pamphlet material, or he would have been incapable of pa ting in the affairs of his commun- ~ty in his time •. The Italian ~~tical philosopher Nicol~ Machiavelli divided.rulers into three categories--those smart enoughyt;;"~nk things through by themselves, those smart enough to under• stand when someone else explained thi · to them, and those too stupid to do either. Bjl that stan- . dard, Washington was. t wi.ce eltMbh; he· ~t explanations and ad vice from knowledgable people, ~he coul.d do his own thinking, because he le e what he had read and expe~ience.d1ffand mastered bo th what he was told·; and (those who told him As tensions between mother country and colonies grew, his comm.anding preaenee+-he stood over 6 'ft tall in a race of small people-·-gave him oppor- - ;t,unity to lead and inspire his- generation of Americans. In June, 1T15 he was chosen Com-im-Ch of the Contiltntal Arrrry, then just a rag-tag group of minute-men around Boston. From the beginning of hostilities he understood the course he should folw. So long as.the commandedan army in thefield, how.Ver ill-tz:a.ined and supplied, the British eould not claim victory over their· rebellious off- .. si)ring. Ae he put it,in a repo:vt to Congress, "We should on all occasions avoid a general aetio or put anything to the risque, unless compelled by a.necessity, into which -we ought never to~be d:r'awn.'1 His fo.rce, a~ways-1 inferio.r to. the professional regiments of the British Army and the'"WV .-.. of the Royal Navy, could win by no other strategy. At Saratoga in 1717, the year of the 3 sevens, an ill-advised and seriously marred-campaign by the British brought 1000s of prisoners to ,, the colonials; it also· brough~ the French into·the battle, hoping to avenge their defeat in. 1763, and to recover their' American Empire. Thereafter, Washington 1 s problems arose from malcontents in his own Anny, and the difficulties of working with allies who had their own agenda and purposes. Thelllr mo~ed southward, where the British anticipated strong local suppor;t1J at King's Mountain, ·'-'at Guilford,- and- at Yorktown, a combined force of French and American troops, and the £u11· force of the French Navy, received the surrender of" the' last British !orce~~still :Lntact. · In 17 83 the peace sett.lament, .appropriately written in Paris, won independence for A.mericans, and a homeland south of the great lakes and east of the Missis·sippi Ri That same year, a few months l:;lefore he resigned his commission,he 'Wrote a Circular to t e Stat • It was his firs.i Farewell Address, .Superior in some ways tha't( was· his more familiar message n leaving the Presidency, in part at least because. Alex Hamilton did not add his editorial a dments .• , In it Washington· reviewed, in .'long, . rolling clauses, the rescurces available to citi ns in a richly'!'..endowed continent, and " the enlightened political· institutions that provide.lib y tor human·.

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