I think the Father of Our Country is too well known for me to say anything in a brief writeup that isn’t already known to most of the folks who might be reading this. Perhaps he should be known as the Father of the Presidency, because he’s the one who set the template. Nobody had done it before, and if he had gotten it wrong who knows what would have become of this country. So, no, I guess the well known epithet is right. If he had got the presidency wrong, we might not have a country today.
I’m going to confine myself to just one anecdote:
When William Thackeray used Washington as a character in The Virginians (1857-59), many Americans were horrified. “Mr. Thackeray,” said one critic, “should never have ventured upon bringing Washington into his story further than to permit him to cross the stage and be seen no more.” Another critic was appalled that Thackeray had portrayed Washington “like other men” in his novel. “Why, this is the essence of falsehood,” he exclaimed. “Washington was not like other men; and to bring his lofty character down to the level of the vulgar passions of common life, is to give the lie to the grandest chapter in the uninspired annals of the human race.”
Horatio Greenough’s huge marble statue of Washington, presenting him as an old Roman, stripped to his waist, with a toga draped over his knees, balancing a sword, and sitting on a Roman chair, raised an even greater storm than Thackeray’s novel when it was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda in 1841. “Our people,” said architect Charles Bulfinch, “will hardly be satisfied with looking on well-developed muscles when they wish to see the great man as their imagination has painted him. I fear that this [statue] will only give the idea of entering or leaving a bath. If I should give my advice, it would be to send the statue to Athens, to be placed in the Parthenon with other naked great men.” The statue was not sent to Athens; but eventually it was put away in the basement of the Smithsonian Institution, where it could embarrass the nation no longer. Nathaniel Hawthorne was amused by all the commotion. “Did anybody ever see Washington nude?” he asked playfully. “It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”
—Presidential Anecdotes by Paul F. Boller Jr.
