No, not just in 1787, but right on up until his death. Did you read the excerpt from Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)?
And sectional tensions had long been apparent. Washington argued specifically against sectional division:
Read that farewell address in its entirety, then come back and tell me Washington would have countenanced dissolution of the Union (never mind actively supporting such a dissolution).
Precisely. Washington had first-hand experience with the failings of loose confederations. Do you really think he would have supported the loose confederacy of the Southern states, with the guiding principle of “states’ rights?” It took Jefferson Davis an entire war and hundreds of thousands of deaths before it finally dawned on him that the the Confederacy’s epitaph would be “Died of an idea.” Washington would have understood this at the outset.
Freddy, I also have to disagree with the premise that slavery was genuinely under attack. I’ll concede that slave owners had a genuine sense of being under attack, but I think most of that was their own perception. There were indeed some active abolitionists in the country, but the majority of people, even in the North, were basically indifferent to slavery and had no active interest in abolishing it. The South fired itself up for a conflict that was not as inevitable as they believed and their fears of attack made war a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Washington was President of a United States he obviously recognized that sectional division was anathema to such a union. However, many of the most ardent supporters of the Confederacy fought and bled for the union that they eventually rebelled against before the Civil War. One can strongly oppose the idea of a shattered nation, but still support the rebellion if other factors weigh in.
I’d argue Robert E. Lee is a good example. I don’t think he wanted the South to secede by any means, I do however think that he felt a strong responsibility to Virginia once secession was a fait accompli. I think George Washington was a man with very strong loyalties to Virginia as well.
Again, Washington was speaking in 1796, as you pointed out in bold letters. The situation in 1796 was drastically different from that in 1860. Keep in mind, that we had just barely gotten people over the Appalachians in Washington’s time. We were a fairly disorganized, smallish country. We had major world powers with extensive land holdings on every border. Washington probably realized that without a united front, this country wasn’t going to work. It would be gobbled up by expansionist powers in North America.
In 1860 we had expanded drastically. The idea of the British rolling in an invasion through the north wasn’t realistic. Spain/France were no longer threats in any way to the United States.
Our government had also changed, and the public ideas about government had changed as well. We have no idea how Wasington would have felt about these things because he never lived them, and never gave his opinion on them (nor could he have.)
How Washington would feel about the government of the Confederacy is harder to say. Jefferson Davis actually wielded more power as President of the Confederacy than Washington did as President of the United States.
So, Washington would find both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis to be people who wielded far greater power than he ever experienced a President as wielding. I do not know if he would have been comfortable with that amount of power being wielded by the executive. It’s impossible to say.
Washington also, keep in mind, fought for a loose confederation of states, and he was in favor of the constitution after the war was over. I do not think it is unrealistic to assume that General Washington would have been willing to fight for a government that was effectively a loose confederation of states fighting for certain ideals they held sacred. I say that because on this we don’t have to speculate, he did just that in the revolution.
Any evidence of this? It appears to me that after the Constitution came into being, Washington’s loyalty was to the United States. As mentioned in the OP’s cite, Washington pointedly referred to himself in his last will as a “citizen of the United States” (not as a citizen of Virginia).
That will is another document which I recommend for careful reading. He provides carefully for the eventual manumission and education of the slaves owned in his own name. He also seeks to create a national university (not a state university).
(shrug) Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis hoped that the institution of slavery would eventually die out, too. It wasn’t necessary to be pro-slavery to be pro-Confederate.
Explain, please. Washington was a strong believer in the power of the President, particularly in matters of war:
You’re missing the point. The very idea of the Confederacy was state’s rights. That idea was anathema to Washington because of his experiences with the Articles of Confederation. He did not view the states as sovereign nations, but as part of a union. The Confederate Constitution, meanwhile, was at pains to stress the sovereignty of the states:
Nor was the debate over state’s rights one that was unknown in Washington’s time. That debate was the very basis for the first party split between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Thomas Jefferson (a Democratic-Republican) was a proponent of the notion of states’ rights. Washington was not. Washington backed Hamilton’s more expansive view of federal power on such issues of the day as funding of the national debt, the assumption of state debts, and the establishment of a national bank. Cite.
I don’t really disagree; there was certainly an element of over-reaction in the South in the 1850’s. From their POV, though, the Republican Party had been founded on an explicit program of stopping the spread of slavery, and was winning elections in the North. They perceived slavery as being under attack, and responded by defending it much more aggressively than they had in Washington’s era.
George Washington dealt with many crises in his career–Valley Forge, the Newburgh Conspiracy, the Spanish Conspiracy, the Whiskey Rebellion, the conflict over a national bank. He almost always supported a strong presidency and a strong central government.
But the one crisis he didn’t face was the formation of a sectional political party opposed to the spread of slavery, the secession of eleven states by duly constituted state authorities, and the levying of war against those state authorities by a federal government under the control of the sectional party. That crisis was so different from the others that I won’t extrapolate from the former to the latter.
Thirty years after Washington’s death, Andrew Jackson faced down the nullifiers in South Carolina. I’m not even confident that Jackson, had he lived, would have opposed the Confederacy. It was a different ball game from anything that had come before.
Spoke, you continue to miss the point. You state that Washington would not have supported the Confederacy. Lots of people here have pointed out that there is no way to know that, the situation in 1860 was worlds away from the situation in the 18th century. He might have supported the Confederacy, he might not have. I don’t know, you don’t know, the author of the article that I imagined that I read doesn’t know, and your attempts to apply 21st century morality to an 18th century man to answer the question of what he would have done in a 19th century situation are laughable. I suspect that you are so resistant to the idea because you’re looking at things in black and white: “Washington was good! He’s the father of the US, there is no way he’d support the Confederates, they were all eeeeeevil racists!”. History, and human beings, is not black and white though, it’s all shades of grey. But what’s really funny is that it doesn’t make a bit of difference weather Washington would have supported the Confederate States of America at all. The question posed was weather Washigton was an apropriate icon for the Confederacy, and I said he was. Icons and idols are all about emotionally identifying with the icon as representative of a common cause. To the vast majority of southerners, Washington was the embodiment of what they believed themselves to be: A southerner, a rebel, leader of an army resisting a foreign power that sought to impose it’s will by force on them, victor in that fight, a slave-owner, a patriot, a founding father. You may argue that some of these may not apply to Washington (although I think they all do), you may argue that Washington would have supported the Union (maybe), but none of that matters. The importance of an icon is in how he is perceived by the society venerating that icon, and Washington fit the bill for the Confederacy admirably. One of our greatest icons is Abraham Lincoln, after all he freed the slaves (and not incidentally preserved the union), but if you were magically transported back to 1860 to talk to Lincoln about race, you’d come away thinking he was the biggest racist in the world (by 21st century standards). Once a historical figure is hoisted up onto a pedestal he or she becomes a two dimensional symbol, not a flesh and blood person.
Sounds to me like we’re conflating two different questions:
Would Washington have supported secession and formation of the CSA?
Once the Confederacy was a fait accompli, would Washington cast his lot with Virginia or would he don a blue uniform?
To me, the first question is the only one worth considering, if we’re talking about whether Washington was an appropriate symbol for the Confederacy. Were his sentiments more likely to have been unionist or secessionist? I say his writings and speeches leave no doubt. I suspect he would have sought compromise and gradual abolition, rather than taking the hard-line stand of Calhoun: that slavery was a “positive good.” Nothing in Washington’s history suggests he could have swallowed that bullshit.
(And gosh, Weirddave, thanks for explaining my own thought process to me. Can you guess what I’m thinking now?)
Not at all. You’ve made no bones about the fact that you have certain knowledge as to my reading habits, I’m just returning the favor. At least my conclusions are based upon the evidence of your posts and not made up out of whole cloth. As for what you’re thinking now, that’s kind of esoteric, isn’t it? Any epistemologists will tell you that the first task is to prove that you really think at all.
No it wasn’t. The issues were the same as when Jackson faced them: tariffs and slavery. You are really on thin ice with Jackson. He spoke very plainly on secession:
No room for reversal there. Hell, if nothing else, Jackson’s famous pride wouldn’t have allowed him to reverse himself and slink into his arch enemy Calhoun’s camp. Jackson would have fought secession tooth and nail.
I hope no one here is under the impression that secession was an overwhelmingly popular option in the Southern states. There were plenty of Southerners who opposed it. (And that included a lot of slave owners.)
In fact, in Georgia it appears that a slim majority of citizens actually voted for unionist representatives to the convention held on the issue, but because of the uneven distribution of those voters, a majority of delegates to the convention wound up being secessionist. Cite.
Lest any of you are thinking, “Oh, well, Washington would have hopped on board the secessionist bandwagon with everyone else in the South,” well, it wasn’t much of a bandwagon (at least prior to the war). There is every reason to believe (based on his writings) that Washington would have been an ardent unionist. And if so, he would by no means have been alone in this.
The third question cannot properly be answered without addressing the first. (Unless you are saying anybody is justified in using Washington as a symbol who so desires, regardless of whether he would agree with their cause. Is that what you’re saying? )
That’s basically what I’m saying. Once you’re dead, and, moreso, once you become a myth, what you actually believed becomes secondary to the myth of you. And to the Confederates, Washington wasn’t the staunch Unionist who was ambiguous and uneasy about slavery. He was the southern Revolutionary War hero, leading an army against a tyranny that oppressed them and denied them representation. That was their myth of Washington, distinct from what or who he actually was.
I think we talked a little about this before, in the case of Robert E. Lee, where somebody praised a movie of Lee for getting his “grandfatherly personality” right. Of course, Lee didn’t have a particularly grandfatherly personality. But that’s the myth. Likewise, if you remember prior conversations about Andrew Jackson and Indian removal, the myth of Andrew Jackson as Indian hater and villian of the piece. The myth is just too strong to fight against.
I would say that the first two questions cannot be answered at all. As Weirddave said, you are attempting to place an 18th century man into a 19th century situation using 21st century morality. The best you can hope for is almost baseless conjecture using 18th cenutry quotes.
I for one don’t think that Washington would have supported it. Considering that the Civil War was the culmination of 70 years of slavery being used as a political tool by the South, a tool that Washington hoped to see phase out of the Nation. Then again Washington was a staunch Virginian and may, like Lee, have supported the Confederation out of state loyalty.
But that is all conjecture. What I can say is that the Confederates obviously saw themselves as following the legacy of Washington and used his image and his memory to support their cause. Now you can argue that a person has a moral ownership of their image even after death, but considering the problems of answering the first two questions for anyone already deceased we would likely be stuck without any historic figures to use as rallying points.
On preview, I see that Alistair and the Captain have addressed this, but since I took the time to type it, here you go:
Not exactly - although that’s getting there.
The point is that the Confederacy was justified in using Washington as a symbol based on the perception among the Confederates that (as Weirddave put it) Washington was “the embodiment of what they believed themselves to be: A southerner, a rebel, leader of an army resisting a foreign power that sought to impose it’s will by force on them, victor in that fight, a slave-owner, a patriot, a founding father.”
Based on that perception, Washington was an ideal icon for the newly formed CSA.
So that’s the OP (aka question (3)): Was the Confederacy justified in using Washington as an icon? IMHO, the answer is YES because, in their view, he embodied the ideals that they sought to identify with.
As for questions (1) and (2) - I think they are debatable. I appreciate that you (spoke-) and the author of the article provided in the OP believe that Washington would not have supported the Confederacy. You have provided ample evidence of WHY you believe that. That’s fine.
I would like to point out that no one has really disagreed with your conclusions - just pointing out that they are not so convinced. I don’t recall anyone jumping on the “Washington would have supported the Confederacy tooth and nail” bandwagon just yet.
Indeed, for my part re: questions (1) and (2), I simply find them elusive and endlessly debatable - in fact, I think they are impossible to answer conclusively. There is really NO way to tell whether Washington would have supported the secession and formation of the CSA either before or after it occurred. In my view, it is almost impossible to discern what Washington would have thought because (a) he was dead in 1860, and (b) the situation had dramatically changed from 1776 and 1789.
I hate to Godwinize the thing, but if that’s the case, then I assume y’all wouldn’t have any problem with the Virginia KKK marching with a bust of Washington at the head of their parade? Because, after all, he was a Virginian, and a slave-owner, etc., and so from their perspective, he’s one of them.
I don’t buy it. Sure, anyone can co-opt an icon, if their “logic” is sufficiently twisted. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us should meekly concede the icon to them.
Perhaps it depends on how broadly you are willing to define “justified.” I think “justify” is not merely a synonym of “rationalize;” it is a higher standard. Could Confederates rationalize using Washington? Yes. Were they justified in doing so? Hell no, I say.
Maybe, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. The fight against ignorance takes stamina!
Ah, but some of us don’t think that their logic was “twisted.” We think it makes perfect sense for a newly established rebel country, to seize upon a rebel figure from their history as an icon. Especially when — because of his death — it’s absolutely impossible to prove that he wouldn’t have supported the CSA.
You seem to believe two things: (a) that George Washington would NEVER have supported the Confederacy, and (b) that the Confederacy should not be ALLOWED to usurp Washington’s image.
About the first — guess what? I believe we cannot ever know what Washington would have thought. Thus, while it’s an interesting question to ask - it cannot be answered definitively. Way back in 1860, with no way to tell which side Washington would have supported, it was completely logical and justified for both sides to seize on Washington as an inspiration. The CSA used Washington as a rebel figure. The Union used Washington as a Federalist figure. Two sides of the same man.
As for the second point — Conceding George Washington was an appropriate icon for the CSA to use neither (a) legitimizes or glorifies the establishment of the CSA, or (b) denigrates Washington in any way.
Please expound. Why were they not justified? Is it because the CSA is “bad” and should not be allowed to use Washington as an idol? Or is it because Washington would not have supported the CSA? Because I (and lots of other people in this thread) DON’T BELIEVE YOU CAN PROVE THAT. And if you can’t prove that, then you can’t split hairs and say their use was rational, but not justified.
Well since you Godwinized it, allow me to gracefully ignore it - and stick to the actual debate. However, if you truly think that this analogy is appropriate or enlightening, just let me know, and I’ll answer it.
