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 wo-hundred
and twenty-five years ago this past Christmas, George Washington
made his momentous crossing of the Delaware River, landing on the
shores of New Jersey and defeating Hessian troops in one of the
critical early engagements of the Revolutionary War. One might think
the people of New Jersey would be predisposed to honoring Washington
— if not for his battlefield heroics on their soil, then for
his later contributions to the development and success of the early
American republic.
Well, think
again. Last year saw a committee of the New Jersey senate kill an
innocuous proposal to celebrate Washington by hanging his portrait
in every one of the state's 600 public-school districts. The bill
was the brainchild of local businessman William Sanders, who has
been single-handedly pushing a revival of Washington's legacy —
and that of the Founding Fathers more broadly — for years.
The portraits, according to Sanders, would serve to remind us "of
what it means to be an American and of the ideals, devotion, and
love of country that were so strongly exemplified by our nation's
first president."
But powerful
players in the state education establishment disagreed. As a spokeswoman
for the New Jersey Education Association recently told USA Today,
"requiring legislation to honor one person does a disservice
to many individuals. There are so many others who were also instrumental
in securing our country's freedom." Her comments reflect the
egalitarianism driving much contemporary educational philosophy,
an egalitarianism so dogmatic it refuses to recognize even the greatest
leaders of America's past. (One has to wonder, though, whether the
NJEA opposes celebrating Martin Luther King Day on similar grounds.
No doubt political correctness trumps consistency.)
More troublesome
were the views expressed by Curtis Ballard, a historian at Oklahoma's
Langston University. Opposing the bill, Ballard told USA Today
that "America was not a pretty place for black people when
George Washington was present. Our people were still in slavery.
This country doesn't have much to celebrate when it comes to 200
years ago and its treatment of people." Nothing gets the p.c.
crowd more infuriated, of course, than the suggestion that something
— anything — good might have happened while slavery still
existed. It's that kind of thinking that drove New Jersey's senate
education committee to bury the proposal.
Not that disparaging
the Founding Fathers is anything new for New Jersey officials. Just
a few years ago, the legislature shot down a proposal requiring
that the preamble of the Declaration of Independence — with
its endorsement of "self-evident truths" that "all
men are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights" — be recited by students
every day before school. The usual arguments were trotted out then
as well, with NJEA officials denouncing the Declaration as overly
"jingoistic" and numerous lawmakers complaining that its
language was not just racist, but sexist, too.
In their repeated
refusals to honor America's Founders in the classroom, liberal opponents
of these proposals present a distorted view of the nation's early
statesmen. At the center of their case has been the issue of slavery.
With a smug arrogance, modern critics indict the Founders for their
failure to end the South's "peculiar institution" in the
wake of the revolution. But in doing so, they ignore the profound
challenges facing American statesmen in the republic's early years.
In effect, these critics blame the Founders for failing to achieve
the impossible.
It's necessary
to keep in mind, after all, that the first generation of American
politicians were faced with a monumental task. They sought to build
a revolutionary political order, encompassing a wide expanse of
territory and a diverse population, centered on the concept of republican
democracy. To construct this new order, they needed to ensure that
the southern states would join in the Union. Any insistence on the
abolition of slavery would have been a recipe for division and disaster.
Moreover, modern
critics routinely ignore (if not misrepresent outright) the Founding
generation's genuine anti-slavery convictions. The leading American
statesmen — from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to George
Washington, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton —
all viewed the ownership of human beings with distaste, as a moral
evil bearable only out of necessity. Their opposition received its
greatest expression in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence,
which unambiguously proclaimed to the world the fact of universal
human equality.
The Founders
themselves listed no exceptions to this "self-evident truth."
Only years later did Southerners such as John C. Calhoun and Justice
Roger Taney argue — provoking the ferocious opposition of Abraham
Lincoln — that blacks were not, in fact, encompassed within
the scope of the Declaration. Ironically enough, it is from these
19th-century defenders of slavery that modern critics now take their
mangled interpretation of the nation's Founding principles.
George Washington
and his fellow statesman deserve the honor and thanks of all American
citizens. Not only did they build a successful democracy in their
own lifetime, but, through their accomplishments ensured the survival
and spread of liberty and equality throughout future generations.
It was from Washington's war for independence and the self-evident
truths of Jefferson's Declaration, after all, that Abraham Lincoln
took his guidance in his decisive struggle against slavery in the
Civil War. And, a century later, it was to the principles of the
American Founding that Martin Luther King appealed while fighting
racism and segregation.
These great
statesmen knew that the ideas and achievements of the Founding Fathers
lie at the core of America's national character. If only the New
Jersey senate agreed.
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