Posts tagged Honor

[One founding father’s candid assessment on the character of leadership displayed by General Washington.  Thomas Jefferson penned this letter to Dr Walter Jones from Monticello January 2, 1814.]

“ … I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these.

His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder.  It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.  Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no General ever planned his battles more judiciously.  But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.  The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York.  He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern.  Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed.  His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision.  He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.  His temper was naturally high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it.  If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.  In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity.  His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.  His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.  Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words.  In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed.  Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.  His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history.  His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors.  On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance.  For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example. … ”