The Indispensable Man

Angel’s Flight  

A Revolutionary War Adventure  http://amzn.to/1sUSjOH

 I happened into the world on George Washington’s birthday. For many years I took real pride from sharing the day with the great man. After all, back in the ‘50’s Washington's birthday was still celebrated on the day on which it fell, which meant that I always had my birthday off from school. 

Pretty sweet—even if February in upstate NY meant we were buried in snow. It was fun to have a party on a school holiday. Friends came to sledding parties and for snow-fort-buildings, but, by the time I was eight or nine, costume parties were my favorite.   To have a costume party in the dead of winter was a little outre—remember, this is the ‘50’s in upstate farm country—but everyone got into the spirit, even if it just meant digging out last autumn’s Halloween costume again.

George Washington and Blue Skin, his favorite horse

But to return to Washington --Father of Our Country. Think about what it means. It’s pretty heavy stuff to lay on anybody who put his pants on one leg at a time. Still, when you take a look at his track record here’s a thumbnail of what you'll find:

“Washington was Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army upon whose victory the thirteen colonies depended to secure their separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the summer of 1787, he presided over America's Constitutional Convention. His presence lent decisive significance to the document drafted there, which continues in force in the twenty-first century as the oldest written constitution in the world. From 1789-1796, he held the highest office in the land as the first president of the United States of America under this constitution.”  

 * The Claremont Institute via PBS website

Washington was “the man who would not be King.” Unlike almost every other popular Revolution since, our military hero did not become a tyrant imperfectly hidden beneath a variety of pious designations as did so many others:  Augustus Caesar, Hitler, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Stalin, Oliver Cromwell and Mao Zedong. 

After the Revolutionary War was over, he said farewell to his officers and went back to Mt. Vernon. Later, when his two terms as president were done, he quietly returned home again. George Washington was truly the “Cincinnatus” his contemporaries called him. Like that legendary Roman farmer, he left plowing his fields to assume a generalship in time of war; after his country's need was over, he went back to his cabbages, corn, and tobacco.

Historian James Flexner’s biography of Washington is called The Indispensable Man, for the excellent reason that the general did not use his overwhelming personal popularity to set himself up as a despot. 

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism..."

He wasn't a demagogue, stirring up division in a nation which, after a long, brutal war, badly needed healing. He did not make promises he didn't intend to keep. He did not set himself up as King or attempt to found a dynasty. He didn't use the power of his office to enrich himself or his friends; and he certainly operated within the rules laid down by the US Constitution--after all, he'd presided over the room, during that hot Philadelphia summer, where this pattern for modern democracy was conceived. 

~~Juliet Waldron

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    historical novels at Amazon

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion, the story of Alexander Hamilton and Betsy Schuyler, from childhood, to the duel, and beyond.  ISBN: 1771456744

Constant Reader

 

Amazon Author Page

 

As a kid, I read to escape a less than ideal reality. I read behind sofas, in closets with a flashlight, under the covers with flashlight, in tents at the summer camps to which I was sent. I wasn't choosy as I am now. I read everything--even the otherwise  forbidden comic books on rainy days at camp. I was amused and thrilled, too, when I discovered how much Marvel had ripped off from Greek mythology and from the thousand page book called Fairy Tales of All Lands which I had plowed my way through during my bout with the German Measles. Later,  my parents assured me that I had "ruined my eyes" by doing so--along with all that "reading in the dark"--although, the fact was my father couldn't see his hand in front of his face without his glasses. Heredity probably had more to do with my nearsightedness.

 

 

I read in corners of bars, out of the way of the staff and the feet of patrons, in the West Indies, where my mother went for her health during the winter. I fished books out of wastebaskets in the sitting room of the Hotel St. Lawrence, which has probably fallen into the sea by now, or been replaced by a mega-story Sheraton. That was how I found The Tales of Hoffmann, The Daughter of Time, and many books by Georgette Heyer, mother of the fan fic Jane Austen, and Jean Plaidy, who wrote many, many historicals, which even at thirteen I found rather dull, but read because they were historical. There were also books which scared me to death, like Something of Value, full of race hatred, murder and torture. (Don’t think ETA Hoffmann didn’t scare me, too. I was as frightened by the idea of a young woman who would die if she sang, as I was by the real-life Mau-Mau.)

 

We had one used book store in my small home town with a grumpy old proprietor and his even grumpier fat old gray cat, who mauled me every time I tried to pet him. Despite the efforts of both owner and his cat to discourage me, I haunted the place, poking through the shelves, sitting on the bare boards and reading. I found Victorian and Edwardian novels. Their slow pace, elegant descriptive paragraphs and carefully crafted world creation drew me down like quick sand.

 

 

 

My parents both brought their childhood libraries with them, and I read Tom Swift and An Indian Boyhood by Charles Eastman which belonged to my father. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley and Kidnapped  and all those Twin books (Colonial Twins, Scotch Twins, Cave Twins ad infinitum) which had belonged to my mother.

 

I still read in the bathtub. Did you know you can take an e-reader into the tub if you plastic bag and seal it? A long time ago, I had a Rocket with a back light, so I've continued the practice of reading while others sleep. I like to read at night, which I do more and more as I grow older. It's a perfect time, quiet, and with no interruptions except for the cats, who can still drop their fannies unerringly upon the one paragraph I'm trying to get through. Still, a cat in lap, a cup of chamomile tea and a good book in hand are just about perfection.

In the '90's, with my sweet Hammie

Thanks so much, Ginger, for hosting me on Dishin' It Out, and, from my Possum Tracks blog,  on your Sunday Snippets & Stuff blog.  Maybe we'll all work together again, us BWL writers. In the meantime:

Onward, Into the Fog!


~~Juliet Waldron

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic
http://yesterrdayrevisitedhere.blogspot.com/