The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1899-02-27
THE REAL GEORGE WASHINGTON

LII OnO - nAbSO OOIICOS do III bOob OA
the other nations Ia which the voice
of the press is free, great public per-
sonages ordinarily pass through two
stages in the popular estimation-de-
traction and deifcation. This has
been true in peculiar degree with
George Washington. No other oc-
cupant of the presidency, strange as
this may seem to most persons of
today, was ever traduced more vio-
lently and indecently than was the
first man who held that post. Philip
Freneau, Benjamin Franklin Bache,
William Duane and other editors of
of the yellow newspapers of little
over century ago, abused Washing
ton with vindictiveness and persist
ence which, to persons who read these
utterances now, are rather humorous
IN their grotesque. mendacitY. These
attacks followed Washington into re-
tirement, and they were not alto
gether stllled even by his death. Of
course Washington's traducers had
NO more influence on the contempo-
rary judgment of the Father of his
Country than they have had on the
estimate of posterity. The opinion
expressed of Washington by such
close acquaintance of his as Hamil-
ton, Pinckney, Jefferson and Madi-
son, and of such unprejudIced and
capable foreign critics as Chatham,
Burke, Frederick the Great and
Vergennes, shows the exalted place
he held in the regard of his contem-
poraries.
Following the deifcation stage of
Washington's reputation, hewever,
which came shortly after the period
of his petty detractors, arrived a
stage of petty disparagement, which
Is we'll expressed in the assertion of
Goodwin Smith in his history of the
United States, that Washington never
won battle. This is the judgment of
shallow persons who are unable or
unwilling to take into the account
the immense difficulties under which
Washington worked, even in the
French and Indian war, when he was
a loyal subject of King George, and
helped to drive the French out of the
new world and to save North Amer
lea for the Anglo-Saxon race. It is
known to students of that period that
if Braddock had paid more heed to
the counsel of Washington and re-
lied less on his own prejudices against
the colonial judgment, the disaster of
1855 would not have occurred, and
Fort Duquesne, on the site of Pitts
burg, would have been taken that
year instead of remaining in French
hands until 1853, when it was cap
tured by the army under the British
general, Forbes. That army, accord
ing to the British historian, Green,
was "guided and inspired by the cour-
age of George Washington.
The man who, with small, poorly
armed and poorly disciplined army,
forced large British force in 1776
to evacuate Boston, town open to
the sea, and capable of being defend
ed by the navy, of which Howe had
many vessels; who crossed the Della
ware on Christmas night of that year
and captured 1000 Hessians; who
routed the British at Trenton in
1777, and who penned up CORVALLIS
at Yorktown and captured him, was,
even under the most discouraging
circumstances, a winner of battles.
The British historians of the better
class, like Green, knight and Lecky,
give Washington higher praise as a
military man than any of the British
commanders in this country at that
time, even than Cornwallis. one of
the greatest Of the English generals
of the eighteenth century. The man
who fred the first shot in the war