This three episode mini-series based on the multivolume
Thomas Flexner biography captures the traditional retelling of
the life of George Washington from the French and Indian (Seven Years) War
to final victory and Independence from England.
Washington's story began in the struggle between England and France
to control the Continent in the French and Indian (Seven Years) War. A spark
light on the Monagehela River as the English pushing north and west slammed into
the French descending from Canada plunged the entire European World into War.
Washington fired the first round in the conflict between Europe's rivals in
imperial pretensions for world domination. Notwithstanding Washington's
reputation for courage, competence, and cool-headedness, the early campaigns were resounding
and complete British disasters. The British were utterly ill-prepared for warfare
in the wilderness.
Perhaps the British weaknesses became too apparent to those Americans who wanted nothing further
to do with Europeans and their never-ending wars.
In the wake of British victory over France, civil unrest in America led to open
breach with Britain. Congress voted Washington command of the ragtag Continental Army which
Washington would lead through times of utter desperation to ultimate victory.
The Revolution is such a broad subject for one movie or mini-series.
Washington could not show
every battle or cabal. It does tell the Arnold story in the stiltified lines of
a Shakespearean tragedy. However because the movie Lafayette befuddled the surrender at
Yorktown, I carefully watched the account in Washington for historical accuracy.
Yet as much as
Washington forged the Army which forged the nation, he did not favor military government.
Compelling his angry soldiers stung by Congressional
dereliction and incompetency
to submit to civil authority embodied in the ungrateful
and inept congress, Washington turned down the Kingship offered him by the Army,
resigned his commission and went out dancing to celebrate newly won Independence.
"George Washington II:" The President
based on biography by
James Thomas Flexner
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Dramatis Personae (partial)
Barry Bostwick .... George Washington
Patty Duke .... Martha Washington
Additional Cast (partial)
Jeffrey Jones .... Thomas Jefferson
Richard Bekins .... Alexander Hamilton
Robert Kelly (I) .... James Monroe
Sam Tsoutsouvas .... Citizen Genet
Paul Collins (I) .... John Adams
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There is a version of the American Revolution, not found in the history books,
that posits the war began in 1775 on lexington and Concord green and continued
until the British-Indian threat was removed from the frontier in 1820: an independent
America survived only by a touch of a feather.
The TV mini series Washington Part II brings to life
the portion of Flexner's biography which leads Washington from
his triumphal accession to the Presidency to his peaceful departure from office
at the end of his second administration. Washington had told the new Congress,
"never before in the history of mankind has the sun shone so brightly on an
enterprise such as we have begun; never before has mankind waited with such
anticipation." After the parades and the cheers faded away, Washington must meet one crisis
after another: the French, extreme republicanism and the Whiskey rebellion and at the same
time establish a regularized new government and a mature relationship with the
former parent Britain. Above factionalism, Washington stood as mediator between
hamiliton and Jefferson as the wings
of the Revolutionary party began to split
Flexner and the miniseries based upon it carefully recount the traditional version.
The miniseries does honor
to the greatness of Washington.
And there is no question that Washington was a great man, far greater than Flexner
the miniseries or even the few erudite Americans are prepared to admit.
The Flexner account correctly puts Washington at the fulcrum of the birth of the Republic.
Washington is the Republic, the new nation
and he balanced Jefferson against Hamiliton the two pillars whose views would
shape American political thought thereeverafter. The first admiral of all
the fleets and general of all the armies is credited with very little ideology.
Washington's task to persuade both Hamiliton the would-be
imperialist that a new imperium was being born and Jefferson the Republican that
democracy would eventually take shape allowed for no great grand theoretican. It's easy to say that Washington was prepared to house
Jefferson's democracy in Hamilton's Imperial Capitol under development on the Potomac. Washington
would have said that all could have been lost in a touch of a feather.
Both Hamilton's Empire and Jefferson's Democracy rested on a touch of a feather. Fullfilling
the dreams of either, much less both, would cost capital. The War for Independence
and the civil strife that followed had depleted available assets. France could have floated no
more loans. King Louis was gone; the Revolutionaries who replaced King were again at war with
Britain in the latest phase of a millenium of conflict between the rivals. Indeed France wanted
America to join it in its war.
In the Flexner view and the mini-series version, Washington successfully rode the waves of tumult
by facing one crisis after another successfully as it arose.
I propose a different version, a Washington of genius but not quite as gentle as America would
later claim. Washington was a man of vision. Unencumbered by ideology but quite willing
to play Hamiliton off against Jefferson, Washington was also a man of focus and the focus was
on the credibility of the new Republic, the Second Constitution and American westward expansion.
America needed money. It had none. It could borrow no more. The answer was selling the Ohio
territory ceded the US by Britain at the conclusion of the War for Independence. The problem
was that the Indians still held the territory and they were very good warriors. Britain never
evacuated its installations located there.
In frontier country Redcoats were accused of open complicity in Indian raids or at least
encouragement of Indian attacks. Americans held the frontier by a touch of the feather.
Governor Clinton of New York worried that frontiersman might defect to the British to gain
safety from Indian attack.
Washington twice ordered Governor Arthur St. Clair
to attack the Miami Indians holding the Ohio Country. In 1790 St Clair dispatched a column
under General Harmar to gather militia to burn and destroy Indian and vast fields of corn. A
large body of Indians Little Turtle lured General Harmar into
the Maumee Valley by feigning flight. Caught off guard and out-flanked,
General Harmar withdrew with heavy losses.
Following Harmar's defeat, St. Clair on Washington's orders assumed command in 1791.
A combined force of
Indians led by legendary Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and renegade Simon Girty
fell on unsuspecting St Clair at the headwaters of the Wabash River.
In minutes the US Army was effectively destroyed.
St Clair's humiliation was a powerful message. As President of the United States under the
old Articles of Confederation, St Clair was one of the architects of the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787 which would have organized the government of the Ohio country.
In the short run, the horrific losses destabilized the frontier country in Western Pennsylvania setting the
stage for the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
In the long run, Washington had effectively silenced an important potential rival and undid
the principal accomplishment of the government of the old Confederation and built the mythology of
the Second Constitution. The First Constitution and its Presidents which included not only
General St Clair but also John Hancock would be forgotten. Washington was not a man who liked
to share the limelight.
Meanwhile Washington had to play a delicate balance to tip the touch of the feather in his direction.
Jefferson urged Washington to honor the treaty struck with King Louis and to war
with England in Frances cause. More practically Hamiliton suggested rapproachment with the British.
Washington silenced Citizen Edmund Genet the French ambassador who openly
recruited Americans to fight in France's cause, dispatched Chief Judge John Jay to Britain
to confirm the cessions of 1783 and rode with Hamilton and the militias of New Jersey and
Pennsylania to suppress the Whiskey rebellion. The Western Pennslyvanians were satisfied with Washington's
pledge to defend the frontier; Washington accepted their promise to try to pay taxes. Hamilton wanted more punishment
exacted, but Washington deemed the issue resolved.
Now in command of the regular US Legion was Pennsylvanian
Mad Anthony Wayne noted for cool courage
in battle and never making the same mistake twice. Wayne was equally capable of training troops
in conventional European tactics as well as irregular Indian ones. Indian spies called
Wayne "the Chief who never sleeps." In 1794 Wayne defeated the Indians
in successive battles at Fort Recovery, the site of St Clair's humiliation,
Fort Defiance and the most famous Fallen Timbers. Fleeing Indians
scurried to Fort Miami, where the British drew up the gates and held their fire
as an American onslaught massacred British allies. The remaining Indian tribes sued for peace.
Jay had returned with a treaty which confirmed all the British cessions. Although
Jay's treaty was not well received by Americans at large, it had gained all Washington's
objectives: peace with England and confirmation of the grant to the Ohio territory. Under
authority of the treaty,
General Wayne received the surrender of British fortifications in the name of the United States.
Washington would surprise friend and foe alike with the announcement in 1796
that he would stand down. Washington's parting words as he left public life were a warning to future generations: the Republic had survived by a touch of a feather; Americans should look inward to the development of their own country and avoid entaglements elsewhere. In the
Flexner mini-series version the true Cincinatus Washington handed over to Adams and walked hand in hand out of
Independence hall with Martha.
The mini-series was remarkably well done. Patty Duke's performance as the mother of her country was surprisingly strong. She has risen above her long running part in the Patty Duke Show as the ditzy Brooklyn Heights teenager. The musical background recreated the tones of the colonial and Federalist era. You can delight in the rarely heard strands of the stirring melody Columbia the original national anthem.
"George Washington:" The Man, The War, The Nation