AMERICA:EVERY AMERICAN school child knows that when George Washington was confronted with evidence that he'd chopped down his father's cherry tree, he replied: "I cannot tell a lie."
That is why Americans eat cherry pie on February 22nd, Washington’s birthday. In 1971, the holiday was combined with Abraham Lincoln’s February 12th birthday, making the third Monday in February the Presidents’ Day bank holiday.
Another tale about Washington – that he skipped a silver dollar across the Potomac river – captures the physical strength of the tall man who fought on the side of the British in the French and Indian War, and then became the first successful leader of a revolution against the British empire.
As the nation’s first president, Washington was conscious of creating precedent. He gave the US the cabinet system and the inaugural address. By handing his sword over to civilian leaders at the end of the Revolutionary War, he established the principle of civilian supremacy over the military. When George III heard that Washington refused to be king of the new country, he said: “If that is true, he must be the greatest man in the world.”
Washington declined to serve a third term, on the grounds that no man should accrue such power. He refused elaborate titles and chose “Mr President” as the form of address for US heads of state.
Washington hated the feuding in his cabinet between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and refused to be affiliated with a political party. His foreign policy finds resonance in the isolationism of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul. The US should avoid “permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world”, Washington said.
Revolt against taxation is another constant of US history. It was to pay for the 1754-1758 French and Indian War that the British imposed the stamp tax which led to the Revolutionary War. Washington led the troops who quashed the first domestic revolt after independence – the Whiskey Rebellion that arose when Congress taxed distilled spirits.
Washington’s visage is ever present, on dollar bills and quarter coins, and in portraits in government buildings. He had several sets of false teeth, carved from hippopotamus and elephant ivory. The ill-fitting appliances left him in constant pain, perhaps an explanation for his dour expression.
Abraham Lincoln is closer to us, in time and in spirit, because race remains a fundamental issue in the US. If Newt Gingrich obtains the Republican presidential nomination, he would challenge US president Barack Obama to seven three-hour debates modelled on those between Lincoln and senator Stephen Douglas in 1858.
While Lincoln, a Republican, argued against slavery on moral grounds, in an early version of the “states’ rights” doctrine espoused by contemporary Republicans, Douglas said the question should be decided by local government.
Despite his legacy as liberator and the man who preserved US unity, Lincoln evokes great sorrow. He suffered from melancholy, which he called the “hypo”. It struck him when his first sweetheart, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835, and again when he and his fiancee Mary Todd broke up in 1841, before reconciling the following year.
Lincoln carried the weight of more than 600,000 deaths in the Civil War. In the midst of that conflict, 150 years ago on Monday, Lincoln’s third and favourite son, 11-year-old Willie, died of typhoid, which he probably contracted from the White House’s contaminated water supply.
Elizabeth Keckly, a former slave who was Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress and confidante, wrote of seeing the president bury his head in his hands, convulsed with emotion. “His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved.”
Mrs Lincoln was so distraught that at one point the president took her to a window in the White House and pointed to the insane asylum which was later called St Elizabeth’s Hospital. “Mother, do you see that large white building on the hill yonder?” he asked. “Try and control your grief, or it will drive you mad, and we may have to send you there.”
In April 1865, six days after Confederate forces surrendered, the actor John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate spy, crept into the Lincolns’ flag-draped box at Ford’s Theatre and fired a single shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. Booth leapt on to the stage, proclaimed the victory of liberty over tyranny and ran outside, where a getaway horse was waiting. He was shot dead by Union soldiers 10 days later.
Lincoln was carried to the Petersen House across the street, where he died nine hours later, and where you can see a reproduction of his deathbed.
More than 750,000 people visit Ford’s Theatre each year, to contemplate the first assassination of a US president.
On Monday, the new $25 million (€19 million) Centre for Education and Leadership will open in the building adjacent to the Petersen House. A two-storey portrait of Lincoln stares down from its facade, and a 34ft sculpture of books about Lincoln rises through the atrium.
