[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 25 (Thursday, February 14, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H980-H983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GEORGE WASHINGTON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Courtney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the

[[Page H981]]

gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, in 1968, Congress 
officially moved the Federal holiday acknowledging our first 
President's birthday to the third Monday in February, so now it is 
commonly known as President's Day. I rise today to give more 
specificity to such an ambiguously titled designation and to try to pay 
appropriate tribute to that first President in our experiment of 
constitutional self-government.
  George Washington was born February 22, 1732, almost 276 years ago. 
He died on December 14, 1799, at the age of 67, a mere 2 years after 
choosing not to run for a third term, thereby establishing a precedent 
now enshrined in our 22nd amendment.
  He has been described as America's premier military and civilian 
leader during the Revolutionary era, and yet, as one historian has 
recently written, young people in particular do not know much about 
Washington.
  By our time, in the early 21st century, George Washington seems so 
far removed from us as to be virtually incomprehensible. He seems to 
come from another place, another time, from another world.
  He did not write a literary, political, military, or philosophical 
treatise that transformed our understanding of philosophy, physics, 
human affairs, or government. Nonetheless, throughout our history he 
has been compared to Cincinnatus, that late fifth century Roman figure 
who spurned his plow for a defense of Rome when so called by the Roman 
Senate. Why is this so?
  The basic facts of Washington's life have been retold on innumerable 
occasions. Nevertheless, if only because this man is on our quarter, on 
the dollar bill, and on Mount Rushmore, they bear repeating.
  Born in 1732 in Virginia along the Potomac River, he was a fourth-
generation American. He was not the first-born son and his family was 
not in the top tier of the Virginia aristocracy. Probably standing at 
6-2 to 6-3, and slightly above 200 pounds, he was a physically imposing 
man. He once threw a stone over the Natural Bridge in the Shenandoah 
Valley, which was 215 high, was generally regarded as the finest 
horseman in Virginia, the rider who led the pack of most fox hunts, and 
was a graceful dancer.
  Washington was an adventurer and a surveyor in the Shenandoah Valley 
as well as an explorer of the Ohio country, then comprised of western 
Pennsylvania and parts of present-day Ohio. He became a Virginia 
militia officer, and was at Fort Necessity in 1754 for that ignominious 
surrender to the French. He left the Army 4 years later, married the 
wealthiest widow in Virginia, Martha Dandridge Custis, in 1759, and 
inherited the now magnificent Mount Vernon when his brother Lawrence 
died.
  At this estate, he was an ambitious farmer, planter, and businessman, 
at first specializing in tobacco. During the course of time that he had 
Mount Vernon under his direction, he systemically quadrupled its size, 
eventually overseeing five farms and introducing new crop rotation 
schemes that are even today admired for their direction.
  While he never seemed to have very much to say, he wasn't indifferent 
to the larger world. We are told he subscribed to ten papers at Mount 
Vernon, and in the 1760s, despite owning 50,000 acres, found himself 
12,000 British pounds in debt. From this and other things, he came to 
believe the extant system of commercial trading with his British 
counterparts was designed for his and his neighbors' perpetual 
indebtedness. He became a nonimportation believer and a supporter of 
colonial efforts at self-sufficiency.
  As we know, Washington served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He 
spoke out against the Stamp Act of 1765, the Declaratory Act of 1766, 
and the Coercive or Intolerable Acts of 1774. During the First 
Continental Congress, Washington was a member of the Virginia 
delegation. After the clashes at Lexington and Concord, he attended the 
Second Continental Congress, wearing his old military uniform, and was 
nominated by John Adams on June 15, 1775, to command the volunteer 
forces that had amassed in Massachusetts because of the British 
occupation of Boston. On July 3, 1775, he took command of that Army, 
then called the Army of the United Colonies.
  A couple of years ago, I was privileged to spend a semester at 
Harvard, and I remember walking through the streets just sort of 
looking at the people playing soccer and baseball, and I saw a monument 
that appeared to be not very spectacular. I went over to see what it 
was all about, and it was a monument to George Washington taking over 
that Army. Inscribed on the walls thereon are the words that he spoke 
that day to those troops. And while I do not have them from memory, I 
recall that he indicated to the men then assembled that they were to be 
united in this effort to fight for freedom. And as I stood there and 
looked at those words and tried to drink them in, you could almost 
sense the power of such a magnificent figure of George Washington 
talking to those assembled scattered troops from all over. He was, in a 
very simple sense, a commander who commanded the attention and the 
loyalty of his men. Of course, the Army of the United Colonies was the 
next year changed to the Continental Army, sounding quite a bit more 
professional than it was in reality.
  While never known for groundbreaking military tactics or strategic 
innovations, Washington nevertheless displayed admirable courage; 
exemplified by his exploits in 1755 at Pittsburgh when, with British 
General Braddock injured, Washington had at least two horses shot out 
from under him, had bullets graze his uniform, only to be unhurt and 
commended for his bravery in leading the troops and organizing their 
retreat.
  His subsequent leadership during the Revolutionary War was 
indispensable to the colonies' eventual success, finally achieved 8 
long years later in the Treaty of Paris. He never accepted a salary as 
Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. More importantly, he was a 
visionary commander, finding such competent and important figures as 
the 33-year-old Rhode Island Quaker Nathanael Greene and the 25-year-
old Boston bookseller Henry Knox.
  While he fought a mere total of nine battles of which he only won 
three, Washington knew he had to keep the colonial forces intact in 
order to defeat the British and woo the French, a dual task he 
accomplished by not focusing on captured grounds, a war of posts as 
they say, but on maneuvering and survival. While highly critical of the 
untrained and undisciplined colonial forces, as Commander in Chief he 
wrote annual letters to the State governments and kept Congress 
knowledgeable of his situation in order to maintain some semblance of 
trust and harmony.
  His surprise military and moral victories at Trenton and Princeton, 
as well as his steadfastness at Valley Forge the following winter, have 
gone down in American lore as true measures of commitment, of 
greatness, of endurance, and leadership. The suffering at Valley Forge 
was unimaginable. There, he wrote, ``To see Men without Cloathes to 
cover their nakedness, without Blankets to lay on, without Shoes, by 
which their Marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and 
almost as often without Provisions as with; Marching through frost and 
Snow, and at Christmas taking up their Winter Quarters within a day's 
March of the enemy, without a House or a Hutt to cover them till they 
could be built and submitting to it without a murmur, is a mark of 
patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarcely be 
parallel'd.''

                              {time}  1745

  He helped to surround Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, effectively 
ending the military aspect of the war. And after the Treaty of Paris 
was finalized, he resigned as Commander in Chief of the American forces 
and surrendered his sword to Congress on December 23, 1783.
  Now, his decision to leave for retirement at Mount Vernon and attend 
the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was not one 
without risk. As James Madison said, Washington would be making a 
decision to ``forsake the honorable retreat to which he had retired and 
risk the reputation he had so deservedly acquired.'' He did attend the 
convention and was elected President. As he later said: ``Whensoever I 
shall be convinced the good of my country requires my reputation to be

[[Page H982]]

put at risk, regard for my own fame will not come in competition with 
an object of so much magnitude.''
  At the Constitutional Convention, his presence was a calming and 
vital force. Probably ``the most graphic illustration of the singular 
status that Washington enjoyed was the decision of the Constitutional 
Convention to deposit the minutes of its secret deliberations with him 
for safekeeping.'' And as James Monroe later told Thomas Jefferson: 
``Be assured, his influence carried this government.''
  His universal admiration helped overcome the suspicions of the 
possibility of monarchy arising out of the new Constitution and its 
king-resembling, popularly elected executive office, a suspicion of 
which he was very much apprehensive. Republics were thought to be 
possible only in small, homogeneous enclaves, not on sprawling, vast 
continents. A fear of monarchy and the concomitant heavy-handed 
government rule, either from necessity or the nature of power-hungry 
man, was widespread.
  As our Nation's first President, he instinctively knew he would be 
setting precedents for future executives to follow as they walked this 
tightrope between centralization and dispersion of power, between 
deference and democracy.
  He was twice elected President unanimously by the Electoral College. 
As one of the premier historians of the founding era has written, ``The 
whole thing,'' that is the creation of the Constitution, ``was merely 
words on paper until implemented by Washington's government. Washington 
knew how malleable the situation was; he understood that every move he 
and his administration made would be a precedent that would shape the 
actuality of the Constitution, and he proceeded with great care. It was 
Washington, for example, who created the structure of the executive 
offices,'' we now call the Cabinet, ``and it was he who defined the 
Senate's role in foreign policy and something of the operational 
meaning of the words `advise and consent.' ''
  As Washington himself said: ``We are a young nation and have a 
character to establish. It behooves us, therefore, to set out right, 
for first impression will be lasting.''
  As President, he believed in the rule of law, however unpopular such 
a belief might be at any given time. When the Whiskey Rebellion, a 
popular uprising in four counties in western Pennsylvania protesting an 
excise tax on whiskey, occurred, when it threatened to stop the normal 
functioning of civil government, Washington firmly stood against the 
subverting of civil authorities. More importantly, in relation to 
constitutional government, Washington was a firm adherent to its 
principles. He believed, in contrast to others of the age who 
sympathized with frequent revolutions ex nihilo, that decisions of a 
republican people ``only be unmade in the same way they had been 
made.''
  This preference for ballots over bullets and appeal to republican, 
constitutional, ballot-driven self-government would be made again by 
Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and be equally as powerful. Self-government in 
the new Republic required adherence to the law, that is our 
Constitution, and the laws under it which articulate the boundaries and 
dimensions of our communal lives together as citizens.
  As he said in his farewell address: ``This government, the offspring 
of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full 
investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its 
principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with 
energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, 
has a just claim to your confidence and support. The very idea of the 
power and right of people to establish government presupposes the duty 
of every individual to obey the established government.''
  So this combination of constitutionalism and consent, he believed, is 
the bedrock of self-government.
  In 1775 Washington said: ``Make the best of mankind as they are, 
since we cannot have them as we wish.'' And as President, he ably 
navigated the waters between Anglo and French factions and their 
sympathizers, both overseas and within his own Cabinet.
  It was Thomas Jefferson's opinion that Jay's Treaty of 1795, an 
important agreement which kept the United States out of the Franco-
British imperial intrigues, that it passed because of the ``one man who 
outweighs them all in influence over the people,'' Washington.
  Perhaps the words of the author Joseph Ellis sum up this magnificent 
life most eloquently when he says: ``Throughout the first half of the 
1790s, the closest approximation to a self-evident truth in American 
politics was George Washington. A legend in his own time, Americans had 
been describing Washington as `the Father of the Country' since 1776, 
which is to say, before there ever was a country. By the time he 
assumed the Presidency in 1789, no other candidate was even thinkable, 
the mythology surrounding Washington's reputation had grown like ivy 
over a statue, effectively
covering the man with an aura of omnipotence, rendering the distinction 
between his human qualities and his heroic achievements impossible to 
delineate.''
  In fact: ``Some of the most incredible stories also happened to be 
true. During General Edward Braddock's ill-fated expedition against the 
French outside Pittsburgh in 1755, a young Washington had joined with 
Daniel Boone to rally the survivors, despite having two horses shot out 
from under him and multiple bullet holes piercing his coat and creasing 
his pants. At Yorktown in 1781, he had insisted on standing atop a 
parapet for a full 15 minutes during an artillery attack, bullets and 
shrapnel flying all about him, defying aides who tried to pull him down 
before he had properly surveyed the field of action. When Washington 
spoke of destiny, people listened.''
  Finally: ``His commanding presence had been the central feature in 
every major event of the revolutionary era: the linchpin of the 
Continental Army throughout 8 long years of desperate fighting from 
1775 to 1783; the presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention in 
1787; the first and only Chief Executive of the fledgling Federal 
Government since 1789. He was the palpable reality that clothed the 
revolutionary rhapsodies in flesh and blood, America's one and only 
indispensable character.''
  Joseph Ellis's description speaks for itself in relation to the man 
that we honor this month. Still, it is not only for these facts alone 
that George Washington has earned our highest esteem. He is also 
frequently commended in discussions of republican political thought and 
classical virtue. One historian has recently written that ``Washington 
became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the 
way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral 
character that set him off from other men.''
  Washington's life was immersed in this classical milieu of 
republicanism, virtue, honor, and deference. Washington loved the 
classical play ``Cato'' by Joseph Addison in which virtue, not purely 
self-aggrandizement, is exemplified and praised. As a young man, he 
copied for himself a text called ``Rules of Civility and Decent 
Behavior in Company and Conversation,'' a list of over 100 short 
instructions on how to conduct oneself in the company of others, in 
society, and in the cultivation of one's manners and morals. While some 
may call these pithy exhortations trite or simplistic today, are we 
really going to ridicule Washington for being concerned with his 
ethical philosophy, a philosophy in which private and public morality 
are a seamless whole?
  Washington did not have a classical education. He did not attend 
college. He was always insecure about these facts and tried to make 
``up for this lack by intensive self-cultivation in liberal enlightened 
values.'' This self-cultivation was successful and it helped him lead 
others throughout his military and civilian endeavors. As one scholar 
has commented, adulation for Washington's classical virtues cannot 
simply be dismissed. He writes: ``General Greene, a Rhode Islander who 
became one of his most trusted deputies, told a friend that 
Washington's very presence spread `the spirit of conquest throughout 
the whole army.' Greene hoped that `we shall be taught to copy his 
example and to prefer the love of liberty in this time of public danger 
to all the soft pleasures of domestic life and support ourselves with 
manly fortitude amidst all the dangers and hardships that attend a 
state of war.' In

[[Page H983]]

part, these rapturous assessments simply expressed the excitability of 
men putting their lives on the line for what seemed a hopeless cause. 
They needed to see greatness, and so they saw it. But the accounts are 
too specific and too consistent for that to be the only reason. Soon 
after Washington's appointment as Commander in Chief, that dour critic 
of men, John Adams, told his wife that the Virginian was destined to 
become `one of the most important characters in the world.' Again and 
again, Washington struck the men of his day as an exemplar of ancient 
republican ideals, almost as though he had stepped from the pedestal of 
the ages.''
  Another historian has written: ``Washington's writings are crowded 
with ringing affirmations of revolutionary ideals'' and ``Washington's 
friends and enemies alike testified that he deeply believed what he 
wrote. Like Cromwell's captain, Washington knew what he fought for, and 
loved what he knew. He was of one mind about that.''
  Today, Washington speaks to us across the ages about virtue, 
education, and religious freedom. In his first inaugural address, 
Washington stated: ``There is no truth more
thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course 
of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between 
duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and 
magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity.'' And 
``that we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of 
heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal 
rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.''
  About the importance of seeing education and virtue as one 
philosophical whole, Washington wrote to his nephew George Steptoe 
Washington these words: ``Should you enter upon the course of studies 
here marked out, you must consider it as the finishing of your 
education, and, therefore, as the time is limited, that every hour 
misspent is lost forever, and that future years cannot compensate for 
lost days at this period of your life. This reflection must show the 
necessity of an unremitting application to your studies. To point out 
the importance of circumspection in your conduct, it may be proper to 
observe that a good moral character is the first essential in a man, 
and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and 
your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is 
therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be 
learned but virtuous.''
  In relation to religion, he was also convinced, as he declared in his 
farewell address, religion was an indispensable foundation for both 
morality and republican government.

                              {time}  1800

  As President, he attended the services of a variety of denominations. 
He addressed Jews as equal fellow citizens in his famous and articulate 
letter to the Newport Hebrew congregation in 1790. In it he said, ``the 
citizens of the United States of America, have a right to applaud 
themselves for having given to mankind examples of a enlarged and 
liberal policy, a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty 
of conscience, and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that 
toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class 
of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural 
rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to 
bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that 
they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good 
citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. . . . 
May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, 
continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants; 
while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and 
there shall be none to make him afraid.''
  This commitment to freedom of conscience had been previously heard in 
1775 when Washington had written, ``while we are contending for our own 
Liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of 
Conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the Judge of 
the Hearts of Men, and to him only in this Case, they are answerable.''
  Finally, his Farewell Address, with its encouragement to avoid 
excessive partisanship, maintain American neutrality, achieve 
diplomatic independence, in short, to implement ``unity at home and 
independence abroad'' still strikes the chords of wisdom and prudence 
in our ears.
  I salute the man in whose tribute a monument without words stands in 
our capital today. Its height, stature and distinctiveness speak for 
themselves. He was a unique man who seemed to be immune to both bullets 
and smallpox. It may or may not be true that Washington ``had neither 
copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words.''
  Nevertheless, even a sometime harsh critic like Thomas Jefferson had 
to admit that ``the moderation and virtue of a single character . . . 
probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others 
have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to 
establish.''
  Now, Washington did say that ``with our fate will the destiny of 
unborn millions be involved,'' and as we look to his birth, life, 
service, and death, we know that he was right, and that should give us 
pause.
  Without Washington's character, his perseverance and achievements, 
all the important historiographical debates over the founding would be 
merely parlor games of philosophical intrigue. Unlike events in decades 
and centuries past, Washington believed in, literally started, and 
served in the system of government which would be called self-
government. Feudalism; monarchy; primogeniture; artificial hereditary 
distinctions, sectarian bloodbaths. These were not to be the 
demarcations of this new Nation. As Washington, in his cautiously 
optimistic manner said in his 1783 Circular to the States, ``the 
foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance 
and superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were 
better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period.'' 
These rights were understood and defined on this newly freed and 
expanding continent, a land of which Washington said, ``is there a 
doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let 
experience solve it. . . . It is well worth a fair and full 
experiment.''
  For ``Washington, America was a practical experiment in the 
preservation of liberty and the success of republican government.'' As 
he said in his First Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789, ``The 
preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the 
republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as 
deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted in the hands of 
the American people.''
  In contrast to monarchies, Washington established the republican 
principle of rotation in office. ``Presidents, no matter how 
indispensable, were inherently disposable.''
  George Washington was ``an extraordinary man who made it possible for 
ordinary men to rule.'' In the words of the great Frederick Douglass, 
the former slave and abolitionist, ``I would not, even in words,'' he 
said, ``do violence to the great events, and thrilling associations, 
that gloriously cluster around the birth of our national 
independence.'' ``No people ever entered upon pathways of nations, with 
higher and grander ideas of justice, liberty and humanity than 
ourselves.''
  Madam Speaker, we have George Washington to thank for such 
beneficence. He made it happen. Now let us live up to that challenge to 
articulate and legislate the contours of liberty and justice for our 
collective humanity in these United States.
  Happy birthday, President Washington. We honor you and appreciate 
your service to this, to our great country.

                          ____________________