by James A. Bacon
President’s Day is more than a week past, not that anyone paid much attention to it anyway (except for Peter G., who penned this piece comparing the myth-making surrounding the founding fathers to the propaganda of Josef Stalin). It’s the day we commemorate the contributions of America’s two greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Of the two, Washington has faltered the most in the popular imagination. Nobody believes the chopping-down-the-cherry-tree tale anymore, and even fewer even appreciate the moral of that fable, “I cannot tell a lie.” “Hey, dude, didn’t you ever hear of situational ethics?” Indeed, for many, Washington was a Founding Hypocrite who espoused liberty for whites while depriving blacks of their freedom. At least Lincoln is revered in modern memory for abolishing the Peculiar Institution.
But Washington is worth remembering, and not just for his role as the nation’s first president or the general who led the 13 colonies to independence. He was one of Virginia’s, and arguably the nation’s, most successful entrepreneurs and businessmen.
- G.W.’s gristmill
This brief essay in Real Clear Markets praises Washington for his entrepreneurial acumen. Washington transformed Mount Vernon from a failing tobacco plantation inso a diversified agroindustrial empire that cultivated wheat, milled it, branded it and sold it throughout the colonies, in England and even in Portugal. His enterprises included a fishery, a gristmill, meat processing, textile and weaving manufactory, brickmaking… (my favorite)…. a distillery. He owned a cargo-carrying schooner and he invested in land development schemes from the Dismal Swamp to the Ohio River basin.
And, yes, George Washington did own slaves. He did not create the institution, he inherited it. But unlike those morally self-righteous voices who criticize the founding fathers for falling short of 21st century ideals without appreciating from where those ideals originated, he wrestled with the inconsistency between his ideals and his material self interest. Tell me how many people today embrace principles that undercut their source of wealth and power to the benefit of someone else? How many left-wing trust fund babies give away the ill-gotten lucre accumulated by their robber-baron ancestors? Not many.
Acutely aware of the contradiction between ideals and practice, Washington worked tirelessly in the last few years of his life not merely to free his slaves upon his death but to create the conditions to ensure their well being — providing for their education and the support of children and the elderly — when they became free. When we see how Martin Luther King’s soaring rhetoric — judging a man by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin — has degenerated today into squalid identity politics, race hustling and envy-driven wealth-transfer schemes, Washington stands all the taller in my esteem.
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