Essay About George Washington And Hero-Like Status

George Washington – Founding Father?
Essay title: George Washington – Founding Father?
George Washington became President in 1789 and since then has been regarded as Americas “Founding Father”(10). This grand and hero-like status is said to have “began gravitating to Washington six months before the Declaration of Independence, when one Levi Allen addressed him in a letter as ‘our political Father.”(10). The preservation of Washingtons role as a national hero has been allowed by authors and the media omitting his many flaws as if they had either been forgotten or were no longer important. Yet by excluding these human faults, they have projected an almost god-like hero and inflicted him upon the nation as their Father, somebody whose “life still has the power to inspire anyone”(10). When in reality, how can a slave-owning President be a hero to Black Americans today? Similarly, Americans of native descent today could not worship Washington, if they knew explicitly how he had treated their ancestors. However textbooks do not explicitly reveal these faults, and even if they give some indication the authors make sure to justify Washington to the best of their ability. Many Americans fail to know very little about the claims of Washingtons greed for wealth, his inability as a politician and President to speak before the Senate and Congress, and the debate to whether he was as good a General as is commonly believed. In addition to these forgotten flaws and human frailties; are the purely fabricated tales of Washingtons childhood, which are still retold to children today. As a boy George Washington allegedly accidentally chopped down a cherry tree, which he confessed to his fathers delight. There is also the tale where his father planted some seeds in the garden which grew up to spell ‘GEORGE WASHINGTON so as to” demonstrate by analogy Gods design in the universe”(10). However these anecdotes are the pure invention of Parson Weems (10) as very little is known about Washingtons early childhood or his relationship with his father. These invented tales, no matter how ridiculous, are less offensive than the authors who brush over or omit Washingtons involvement in slavery. In the ‘moral autobiography of George Washington called Founding Father; Richard Brookhiser justifies Washingtons actions by stating “slavery was sanctioned by the Bible and by Aristotle”. Although Brookhiser underlines the hypocrisy that Washington used the “rhetoric of resistance to slavery regularly” when corresponding with the British before the Declaration of Independence: he still justifies George Washington as a slave-owner by implying he treated them humanely. It is also suggested that Washington was a good man as at the beginning of “the early 1770s, he rarely bought a slave, and he would not sell one”. In addition to this, the author explains how the “slaves were to be freed at his wifes death”. However I am sure that these excuses could not justify his behaviour to Black Americans today. Similarly, can George Washington really be considered a hero, or just an immense hypocrite who owned slaves whilst signed the Declaration of Independence, declaring, “all men were created equal” (11). Another way that was intended to preserve him as a hero is that he was a “disapproving owner” (12) and that he would have liked slavery to end but he didnt personally feel politically driven to put an end to it. George Washington claimed in a letter to Robert Morris that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery (13). However if he felt so passionately against slavery, he could not have been that heroic or strong as a President as he did not even attempt to implement abolition. It seems that George Washington was fully aware that slavery was morally and humanely wrong, yet was to accustomed to the economic and social ‘benefits to want to change the situation. Ironically, the British who George Washington had claimed had been enslaving the American colonies under its tyrannical rule, no longer practised slavery in Britain. Once the war between England and America broke out, the British offered freedom to any slave who ran away from their rebellious owner (14). Despite their efforts Brookhiser suggests again that this was not a “philanthropic