A hero of the first degree

His Excellency continues to be fascinating and enjoyable. Ellis' is a good storyteller.

In his coverage of Washington, he necessarily touches on Nathanael Greene, who armed Washington with excellent counsel time and time again. While I am familiar with him, Ellis' work has given me a much closer look at him. I admire what I see, enough to put him high on my list of important figures to study. If anyone has a good biography to recommend, please leave a comment.

At a critical juncture, when Washington's competence is being questioned (with cause) and he was spoiling for an all-or-nothing battle, Greene reminded him that he had no choice but to fight a protracted defensive war. "Your Excellency," Greene advised, "has the choice of but two things, to fight the Enemy without the least Prospect of Success...or remain inactive, & be the subject of Censure of an ignorant & impatient populace."

Greene added that not only would Washington risk a defeat with another attempt to repeat the Trenton-Princeton successes of the previous winter in the current winter, but it would also "expose the weakness of the militia to the enemy and not only them but to all europe who now consider them much more formidable than they really are."

Washington accepts Greene's counsel even though its wisdom runs against his grain personally. Ellis writes that Washington's decision not to act "completed his transformation into a public figure whose personal convictions must be suppressed and rendered subordinate to his higher calling as an agent of history, which in this case meant that winning the war was more important than being himself."

While I agree with Ellis that this occasion merits special recognition, I don't share his summation in this case. I hold that there is no higher calling than this—to keep clear the distinction between the "I wish" and the "it is"; that is, to keep clear the difference between your emotions and your rational lock on reality. Washington does that in spades here, fighting through his personal emotions, his past conclusions to see the reality immediately before him, demanding a new approach to solve life and death problems on an historic scale.

In my book, this makes him a hero of the first degree, not because he suppressed his convictions but because he held mightily to his reason, to his ruthless objectivity to serve his admirably selfish interest in winning the war.

God bless him.