George Washington, The “American Moses”

“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” said Major General Henry Lee about George Washington, after his death. He was surely that and more. Emerging as the most significant leader in the founding of the United States, he was the essential man, the American Moses, the Father of the Country. At the three major crossroads in the establishment of the nation, he led our troops to victory in the Revolutionary War, he superintended the Constitutional Convention, and he was unanimously elected as the first president.

How, one wonders, is it possible for so much greatness to be embodied in one man? After all, he was surrounded by a host of other courageous leaders, brilliant thinkers, passionate orators, and gifted writers — Franklin, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Mason, John and Samuel Adams, Hamilton, Madison — almost all of whom were far better educated than he. Yet Washington always led the way.

While much has often been made of his physical stature (he stood six feet two inches when the average man stood five feet seven inches, and he weighed two hundred pounds), or his courage, charisma, energy, vision, calm demeanor, or wealth, it was his high moral character that most historical sources commonly cite as the reason for his emergence as the supreme leader. Combine his sterling character and his genius in the area of leadership, and here was a man who could be trusted implicitly to lead over a long period of time and in the course of extraordinary difficulties.

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, said about Washington: “He was . . . possessed of power, possessed of an extensive influence, but he never used it but for the benefit of his country. . . . If you look through the whole tenor of his life, history will not produce to us a parallel.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote of Washington: “His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known. No motives . . . of friendship or hatred being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. 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.”

Taken from The American Patriot’s Bible