href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41012@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XVI" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">XVI.

Standards of American Patriotism
Foundations.
Freedom of the Western Hemisphere.
The Loyalty of Youth. 163 XVII. Concluding Reflections
The Washington Ideal as the American Ideal.
Not Birth But Character Makes Americans.
The American Lesson Learned from the Greatest Leaders in the Making of America. 176

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WASHINGTON AND AMERICAN LIBERTY

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS

I. AMERICAN PATRIOTISM AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA

“America for Americans” is a patriotic appeal that has arisen in many a political crisis, and then gone to pieces in the confusions of what we mean by “Americans” and “America.” American Liberty has been a goddess of worship from the beginning, and yet we find ourselves in an endless turmoil concerning what we mean by “American liberty.”

Washington and his associate patriots wrote a great definition in history and established that definition in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, but human meaning, like the skies, seems hard to get clear and to keep clear. To know clearly what the definition of freedom means and to promote it in the right-minded way, is the patriotism that identifies anyone anywhere as being American. The makers of America loved the right-minded way, and their primary test of justice unfailingly required, as a basis, the personal liberty that has been described to us by all as freedom to do the right that wrongs no one. To these “rights of man,” they gave “the last full measure of devotion,” as Lincoln defined patriotism, for “the birth of a new freedom under God.”

The public-school youth, who is not in one way or another familiar with the Americanism of Washington and Lincoln, is not yet prepared either for college or for life, and, still more clearly, is not prepared to be an American. The number of un-Americans in America may, in some crisis, become appalling, if, in fact, they do not succeed in Europeanizing America. Against that possibility there is nothing to save us, if we do not save ourselves as our hereditary task of American patriotism.

Washington and Lincoln are the two incomparable constructive ideals of American liberty and manhood. The two lives together complete the meaning of America. Washington began his life with a super-abundance of everything aristocratic in his age. Lincoln began his life in worldly nothingness that had indeed nothing for him but the democratic wilderness till he became a man. And yet both became the same great soul in the same great cause, the maker and preserver of American civilization, as the moral law of man and God.

American life and its ideal humanity cannot be understood by American youth until the wonderful character and struggle of these two supremely typical Americans are understood as the expression of the meaning of America, and even no less as a meaning for the world.

The Great Teacher said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he will lay down his life for a friend,” and no man on earth has a greater friend than the America of Washington and Lincoln.

II. WASHINGTON’S EARLY SURROUNDINGS

We cannot think with a true vision, in estimating the meaning of colonial and revolutionary days, if we allow the glamor of fame and the idolatry of colonial patriotism to obscure our view of those times. There were heroes immortal with what we know as “the spirit of ’76,” but, grading from them were the good, bad and indifferent, that often seemed overwhelming in numbers.

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George Washington is known chiefly through the rather stilted style of writing that then prevailed, and the puritanic expressions that were used in describing commendable conduct. Even Washington’s writings were edited so as not to offend sensitive ears, and so as not to give an impression to the reader different from the idealized orthodox character of that severe pioneer civilization. The people were free in everything but social expression. That was sternly required to conform to a rigid puritanic or cavalier standard.

Washington, more than any other great man, seems to have composed his early life from what some well-meaning reformers have termed “copy-book morality;” that is, proverbial morality or personal rules of conduct. Washington in his boyhood wrote out many moral sentences as reminders for his own guidance. He was a persistent searcher after the right way toward the right life.

Washington’s mother is described as being stern in business and moral discipline, even as having a violent temper and being capable of very severe measures to accomplish needed results. It seems that Washington, seeing this method in both father and mother, reinforced, as it were, by the military bearing of his much-admired elder half-brother, took that form of life as his earliest ideal. He was as tireless in perfecting models of business and life as Lincoln was in mastering the unconventional meaning of human beings. Washington at the ages of eleven and twelve delighted to copy various book-keeping forms and mercantile documents. His school books at that age are still preserved and they are models of accuracy and neatness. Besides that, he loved to discipline himself. He was always subjecting himself, either mentally or physically, to some kind of orderly training.

For one who was destined to have such a leading part in framing a new nation for a new world, such a making of mind seems to have been just the thing for that great task.

He enjoyed a great local reputation as the boy who could ride any horse in that county, and who could throw a stone across the Rappahannock. He was a leader in every group of boys to which he came. He drilled them in military parades and umpired them in their disputes and games. Students of the mind-making process have much to consider in the comparison and analogy of a boy being first military chieftain to his playmates, and then step by step, the legislator, judge and chief executive in their political affairs, with the generalship of a revolution for national independence, and the statesmanship of a new empire built in the cause of humanity.

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CHAPTER II
THE BOY WITH A WILL AND A WAY

I. EARLY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE FIRST AMERICAN HERO 1732

George Washington has his place in American history, not only as being the great commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary army, but as being no less influential and powerful as a political leader and constructive American statesman. He was born February 22, 1732, in one of the wealthiest and most cultured homes in America. From the front door of his father’s house, on the estate that was a few years later named Mount Vernon, could