American History Hit - Revolutionary War: How Good Was George Washington?

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Whisper it quietly, but could our original commander-in-chief possibly be overrated as a military leader?To find out Don is joined once again by Major Jonathan Bratten of the National Guard. Together they examine George Washington's strategic skill, tactical capacity and overall revolutionary record. How did he get the job? What could he have done better? And what sets him apart in our national memory?Edited by Aidan Lonergan, produced by Sophie Gee. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sound.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Hello there and welcome to one of the toniest neighborhoods on Manhattan's Upper East Side, right here on Fifth Avenue, on the iconic front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ground Zero for the famous Met Gala, that annual spectacle of celebrity in fashionable extremes. But come with me, we're going inside. I want to show you something. A couple of facts, the Met holds a staggering collection, 1.5 million works of art, they say. tens of thousands of which can be viewed across a dizzying maze of galleries. Right now we're crossing the Great Hall with its vaulted ceiling, and we're heading up those stairs to the American wing. Stay close, you might get lost, and here we are. Room 760, this is what we've come for.

Take a look. End of the room there, commanding the space on its very own wall, the world-famous Washington Crossing the Delaware. Painted by a German, Emmanuel Loitza, A 21 by 12-foot epic on canvas. Something else, right? George Washington, heroically posed, right foot propped on a seat, torso, draped in a cloak, leading rag-tag troops across an icy river on Christmas night, 1776, to ambush the British in Trenton.

It is the indelible image of a truly pivotal event. About a couple of things. First, they didn't cross-crowded in such small boats. I mean, there were 1,200 men. That required longer, flat-bottomed Durham boats, big enough for more men, horses, even artillery. And forget the Hollywood lighting, this was the middle of a miserable storm. Driving wind, sleet, snow, at night, dead of winter. The real scene would have been far less cinematic, and with a lot more ice in the river.

And oh yeah, the flag. That's the stars and stripes there in the painting, but that design wasn't adopted as the New Nations standard for another six or seven months. But hey, artistic license, right? After all, this was painted 70 years later in the 1850s. In Germany. It's still a genius painting, hanging in the Met for good reason. One that effectively prompts all sorts of historical questions, not least about the man himself. What was Washington's true role in the revolution? Yes, he led the army for eight and a half years through its high points and so many terrible lows. But forget the iconic painting, forget that iconic hero there.

How central was this man, Washington, in leading the revolution itself? Greetings all, welcome to American History Hit. Thanks for joining us. He is remembered as the father of our nation. George Washington, first president of the United States, served from April 1789 to March 1797, played a key role in the drafting of the Constitution, the foundation of the U.S. government to this day. But before he became a statesman, Washington was, of course, a military man, led patriot forces through the long, sloggy years of the Revolutionary War. His leadership is legendary, yet even in his own time, he was both celebrated and criticized. That duality remains. So as America's 250th anniversary looms, it's worth revisiting Washington's wartime record.

not just his triumphs, but also his setbacks to better understand how his very human qualities shaped the outcome of the war and the nation that followed him through it, and in many ways, Washington himself. We do this in the company of Major Jonathan D. Bratton, engineer officer, and army historian. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Nice to be with you. It is a absolute pleasure to be here. Effective military leadership, a discipline with many facets, strategic vision, decisiveness under pressure, the ability to inspire and unite your troops, and an

understanding of human nature. But it's in the realm of tactics that Washington is a mixed bag. We're going to get to discuss the way he fought several battles. But first, I want to understand how he got the job. How did George Washington become the leader of the Revolutionary Forces? Yeah, a great question. And one that actually I think opens up a bunch of rabbit holes in which we could dive or not dive, depending on how deep one would want to go. Because, yes, by 1775, you have Washington as chosen by the Continental Congress as the de facto head of this thing, this continental army, whatever that was even going to mean at the time. The short answer is, because he did actually have the most experience leading troops at that tactical level. Most

Most provincials through the colonial wars, so the periods of the 1740s, 50s, and 60s tended to have logistics jobs, essentially, or what we today in the Army would call sustainment. Washington is the only provincial, as they were called, to have experience commanding a brigade-sized element. So several maneuver units of regiments grouped into one formation. And while he didn't really ever fight a battle as a brigade commander, just the, The simple experience of a provincial being entrusted with a brigade command was kind of a big deal. So when you're looking from the sphere of 1775 and the Continental Congress to who should command this army, Washington hops up definitely adds an option. But honestly, I think it has less to do with his tactical prowess or not than where he's from.

And the situation of the Continental Army and this sort of, you know, what are we? Are we in a rebellion? Are we an independence movement? What's happening here in 1775? It's because he's from Virginia. Yeah. He's coming from the strong place of Virginia, which is a very different place than New England, you know, in terms of the organization that is behind him, much more powerful. He was born into an upper middle class family, locally schooled, self-educated, had aspirations. Very important part of this because if you came from his background, the way you would advance yourself would be through military adventure. I mean, that was a big tradition. Through military adventure or, you know, being the older son. Yes, exactly.

We have to remember that this is a British shaped society. Yeah. And so the older son is going to have more opportunities. Your younger sons are going to have to look at things like, you know, getting a real job. A clergy member, circling in the military, whether the army or navy, his older brother, Lawrence is going to serve in the British Army. Yeah. And for younger Washington, he's looking at getting an actual job as a surveyor. And so his life is shaped by possibilities and lack of possibilities.

The areas that are open to him do have really amazing potential, but it's not the same as sort of this older son, this sion of empire that he kind of is striving for. So I think we always have to look at Washington in the terms of what he wants to be or how he wants to be perceived, because that's not always the way that he actually is. Sure. He marries up.

He marries Martha Custis, smart move there. And you start to see, you know, this is a man who's on a course of ambition. He has a bigger life in mind and becoming part of the military. He, of course, enlists in the Virginia militia, which then becomes engaged in what we call the French and Indian War in America, seven years war over here in London. By the way, I'm sitting in London as I talk about this. Very exciting for me. A whole different perspective on American history.

Let me tell you that. He will lead a force in the French and Indian War. and things don't necessarily go well for him. He has a big failure there out there towards what becomes Pittsburgh. He does, but he's also presented a pretty monumental task. If you think I was actually just recently out that way. And when you think about, we just say the word Pittsburgh, and we can automatically imagine, you know, Pittsburgh Steelers,

industrial city, all these things, not that this is the backwater of empire. This is essentially, you know, in London, saying we're going to the forks of Ohio. You're also might as well just say, we're also going to the moon as well. And, you know, the far reaches of India. When we talk about Washington's expedition, he is doing an nearly impossible thing.

And he's not doing it at the behest of the crown. He's doing it at the behest of land companies to move out and essentially secure this region for the Virginia company. And, yeah, as you say, it goes wrong. And we could spend a lot of time talking about Washington's tactical failures, but also the constraints that he's placed in. He's very far. He's not viewed as a failure in this regard. It was a military situation that he was dealing with, and it doesn't reflect too badly on him.

He becomes a lieutenant colonel, but he is not allowed to become an officer in the British Army, which is a really important part of the story. And as a result of the rise of rebellion going on and what he becomes involved in, which is a kind of other story here, May of 1775, he attends the Continental Congress in his full military uniform. Is he advertising himself for the job? 100%. He's advertising that, hey, I have the experience, and also you need me. You rebellious colonies of New England, remember, it is only New England at this point that

is inactive rebellion against the crown. So they need to create a continental army. In order to create an army and a rebellion that spans the entire coast, they need Virginia. They need the southern colonies. They need the middle colonies. This is an effort to try. try to bring everyone else into the war. So it's not just New England that's fighting this thing alone. Yeah. So absolutely he's advocating for it. Others are advocating on his behalf as well.

He's not, he has a good many supporters. Right. It's more of a summary point that I should come at the end, but I want to point out, you know, compare this to Lincoln and his many generals. I mean, the American Revolution is as unique in that it has one commander in chief sort of, that's not the name of it, but one commander in charge of this whole time for all those years. It's a remarkable fact and a tribute to Washington, as we will talk about. Six weeks later, his effort pays off. He is appointed commander-in-chief on June 15, 1775, but he is in charge of the army outside of Boston, which is where the action is at this point. So I want to ask a general question, which is really going to feed into all the different subject matter here. How good a strategist was he considered?

That has so much to do with the criticism that comes to Washington over the ages, and it's not necessarily positive, is it? I think you have to look at which Washington are we talking about. Are we talking about 1775 Washington, where he's literally just trying to create basic discipline and order in an army that could he sometimes refer to as an armed mob? Is this 1777 Washington where he is on the back side of his defeats in New York, and he's trying to forecast British moves against Philadelphia and Albany? Or is this 1780-81, Washington, where he is he, you know, on the back side of his defeats in New York, and he's trying to forecast 1880, 81, Washington, where he is working skillfully with French allies and trying to pick the

best moment to gain a decisive battle. Because you have Washington's greatest strength. You know, you said he hangs on. His greatest strength is he learns very early on. He's very much keyed into this idea of positional warfare and holding positions at all cost. Eventually, he will not care about positions. He will happily give up Philadelphia to the British in 1777. because he knows it's not going to do him any good. And in fact, Howe realizes that after he takes Philadelphia and goes, well, I didn't destroy the Continental Army. I don't know what I'm doing here.

So if we look at Washington's strategic vision, it is constantly changing just as the situation changes. But what he realizes the most and the most important thing that he brings post 1776 is that the Continental Army itself, keeping that army in the field, an army in being, and a constant thorn and aside to the British is the most important. thing for the American cause. And this is what he's going to send down to his commanders, as this is your priority to keep an army in the field. As long as an army fighting, we have a chance. I'll be right back with Jonathan after this break. Humility has a lot to do with Washington's

reputation, isn't it? It's an extraordinary quality to have in a military leader. But he loses more battles than he wins, unless you consider retreat a form of battle, you know, a form of winning, because he preserves the army, as you say. Well, it is the question of what do we mean by win? This is a big question that we have in military history communities right now, especially in the light of the last 20 years, 23 years of American conflict. What does it mean to win? What does that look like? How do we define winning to the military, to the government and to the American people or to the general populace at large? And for Washington, winning looks like not losing. He makes the statement of we need to be able to create time. Time is Washington's friend. Time is the Continental Army's friend. And there is no Continental Army leader who has more wins than practical losses. We make the joke that in order to be a Continental Army commander, you have to have presided over at least one major calamitous disaster.

And that's sort of how you're accepted into the fold. But if you look at most leaders, they are not winning huge battles. There are some wins in there, but they're few and far between. the winds that are there are so incredibly important placed in time and space as to cause key critical loss to the British capabilities in that given theater that they are kind of remarkable. And the losses are such that, except for maybe Camden, you have a continental army that remains in the field and to some extent New York 76 and able to fight another day. A eulogy was given by someone after his death. Washington had a greatness in

quote, formation of extensive and masterly plans and the watchful seizure of every advantage. But he himself said in 1776 that he had a want of experience to move on a large scale. He had a limited and contracted knowledge in military matters. So this is a man who's learning as he goes, isn't it? I think that's a really important factor throughout the war. He is understanding that he's underschooled in this type of warfare. Underschooled, but also and what is the army that he is working with. So he undergoes a reform of the Continental Army at least three, if not four times.

There's at least three establishments of the Continental Army. The most notable being from 1775 to 1776, where he oversees a complete transformation of the army, subbing entirely new units in for old ones under the eyes of the British. And he makes this quip, you know, if there's probably nothing so difficult as forming a new army out of an old one, unless it is under the little guns of the enemy, which he does. And so he is constantly trying to figure out what is the best type of formation, what is the best army for achieving my political and military ends. But he wants his forces to be on par with the regulars.

He wants to be able to pull off the tactical maneuvers, the double envelopments that are sort of standard at the time. He wants them to be able to march and reconnoiter in the same time as the British. But this is an army that is literally, growing. It is not sure what it is. It is a volunteer force. And Americans are very independent-minded. It's going to take a lot of time to turn this army into a proper fighting force. And Washington is fighting for that time. So he's got time on his mind in both aspects. So much of a strategist, the requirements of strategy is to understand the land you're fighting on, you know, how you're

going to set up your troops and so forth. And this was what he was criticized for, for not really understanding how best to do this, even by leaders below him, like Charles Lee and those and stuff before, had great criticisms in the Congress. People looked at his choices as very skeptically. Well, if you're in charge, everyone's going to criticize you. And if you've got Charles Lee as a subordinate, no matter what you do, he's going to criticize. Yeah. I think the remarkable thing about Washington is that he weatheres this criticism. And it's coming in from all sides. Even John Adams, at a certain point, comes for Washington. When you've got multiple attempts, the Conway Cabal, he's got subordinates who scheme against him, Horatio Gates, etc.

But he also does some sort of remarkable things. As you say, he learned. So in 1776, he loses Fort Washington and Lee. Really major disasters. One of those, he loses a garrison of 3,500 troops. That's a lot of soldiers in 1776. But that's where he goes, all right, we are not holding static positions anymore like this. The most important thing is your army. And what's also interesting is he's learning that war is not just a military thing. It is political. He wanted to only defend a small piece of the area around New York. The leadership of New York State and New York City said, no, we, and the Continental Congress said, you must preserve New York. This is a thing that Benjamin Lincoln is going to run into again in 1780 with the siege of Charleston. Benjamin Lincoln wants to pull his

5,000 Continentals out of Charleston. He realizes it's a trap. They will. all get captured if they remain there. But the political leadership of South Carolina says, no, it is your job to protect this infrastructure, to protect these people. And in fact, if you do withdraw your army, we and the militia will turn on you and attack you. That is a remarkable political situation to be in. So Washington and his supportive commanders are walking this fine line of, yes, we are military leaders, but we answer to a political authority. And we have to find that that spot where everyone is, you know, happy. And it ends in two of the largest disasters of the revolution is New York and Charleston. So that retreat that he eventually makes from New York,

from Long Island and then in the Battle of Brooklyn and all that across Manhattan and then up White Plains and so forth, that's part of his choice despite the orders he was getting from Congress? He has to at that point because he has been driven out from position to position. Congress wants him to hold at every strong point. Stop and defend this next position. What Washington ends up doing in order to preserve the army is literally just moving from point to point trading space for time through the fall of 1776 until he's able to recross. But what he's also doing is he's trying to buy time for troops to move from the northern theater. We always think of, oh, the revolution is just this one thing that's happening around Washington at all times.

He's got multiple theaters of the war. So troops in the Northern Theater are waiting for a British invasion from Canada. That invasion force pulls back with the onset of winter. And now 5 to 10,000 fresh, relatively fresh-ish. Continentals and militia can be pulled from the Northern Theater down to the main with the main army. And that is what gives him this ability to execute his counterattack at Trenton and Princeton, which many laud him for as being this example of. Never giving up. Resiliency, audacity, and seizing a key moment even when you were at your darkest.

But that was a very close call. I mean, things could have gone very wrong at that point. He got lucky in many regards. Very complicated plan in Princeton. Very complicated plan. Part of the attack at Trenton doesn't even go off. One commander does not cross because the weather conditions are too bad. Washington weighs risk constantly. If you want to look at Washington from sort of a gambler's perspective, he uses prudent risk. He takes risks, absolutely. If you look at his example of Brandywine in 1777, he is taking a risk by deploying his forces basically to the point where it will take, he knows how we'll have to march at least four to six hours out of his way. And so he posts his basically just to that line to be able to catch where he knows what Howe's capabilities

are, which is how he knows that he is about to be flanked. He moves a division to cover his flank. There's a whole bunch of subordinates who get some things wrong, and he ends up doing a fighting withdrawal to the end of the day. It ends up being called a defeat, but Howe can't move for another three days because he has so many casualties, his baggage is miles away, and he's essentially lost his mobility while Washington fades back to prepare for another battle, and then ends up, he does end up giving up Philadelphia, but mainly because it is of zero use to the continental cause at this point. When we look at Washington's tactical strengths, weaknesses, it gets complicated because we often like to see things in clear terms of, oh, it's a win or it's a loss. Most of the

time, it's way more complicated. Yeah, but you can understand people's doubts. I mean, he's lost New York. He's lost Philadelphia. We're two years into the war at this point, or thereabouts. It's not going well by many estimations, and then continues to be a real struggle throughout. He's also criticized for a failure to act in the South. only committing troops there when actually ordered by Congress. So the South is a weird theater because you have the British turning there in 1778 to 1779 with Germains and Lord North Southern strategy. For the American cause, the South, there's not as many people there. For the British, those are the most wealthy colonies. They are the ones who are

importing, or exporting rather, really expensive stuff, you know, rice, cotton, indigo, sugar, all that stuff. You know, the northern colonies, not so much. Northern colonies are great as an export dumping market, dump all British goods there. So for the Southern theater, it's very, very, very hard to string together any type of cohesive campaign plan from the continental perspective when you have so few large population areas and you don't have a huge population to draw troops from. If you actually look at what Washington does is he very reluctantly weakens his own army. You can actually look at the Virginia troops go to the south in 1779, 1780, and then after that,

you've got Maryland troops being stripped down to the Southern Theater, and then by 1780, 881, Pennsylvania troops are going into the Southern Theater. He is literally having to reinforce this area because there are not enough continental or militia troops in the Southern Theater to sustain that as that region as its own fighting force. So he is having to draw away from his own strength. It's not that he doesn't want to reinforce, but he can so barely spare soldiers from his own department. And throwing, you know, it's sort of like throwing good money after bad.

Why am I going to reinforce failure when I could possibly reinforce success? Because the Southern Theater has been a string of failures until Green gets there and understands that what he has to do is essentially a petit guer, a small war, draw the British out into the countryside, maybe win a battle but lose a bunch, but wear down their will to fight, and that's what eventually gets Cornwallis so annoyed that he heads off towards Virginia in 1781.

And I'm way out of chronology here, but Saratoga, which is so much the story of the middle of the war and the fact that we get the French engaged here, he's not even there for that battle. He's not, but he shapes it. Remember, so as the commander-in-chief, so in 1777, and Fort Ticonderoga, what erroneously referred to as the Gibraltar of the north.

Just don't call anything a Gibraltar unless it's actually Gibraltar. It's a sure way for it to fall. Fort Ticonderoga falls, but the garrison remains intact because the Northern Army retreats out of Fort Ticonderoga, mainly because the commander, following Washington's injunction, preserve your force. He keeps the Northern Army intact. The Northern Army falls back, again, trading space for time. causing Burgoyne to deploy his forces further, have lengthen his supply lines, and really put

himself at the end of this tenuous line of communication back to Canada. And as the Northern Army retreats into New York further south towards Albany, it is getting strengthened. And one of the ways that it's getting strengthened is Washington is stripping his army of some of its best leaders. So Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Lincoln are two general officers he sends up who are both instrumental in the Battle of Saratoga. He will send the, I don't want to call it, elite forces, but very, very good troops, the provisional rifle corps under Daniel Morgan,

with its accompanying light infantry. And he sends about a brigade to a brigade and a half of Continentals that are sort of theater reserve from New York. So he's all that while he knows how is going to fight him for Philadelphia. He needs these forces. But he also sees that there is an opportunity here

to possibly do something greater. If Burgoyne is drawn so deep into New York, he can possibly be surrounded, brought to battle, and maybe even surrender. So, yes, he's not there, but you have to look at how he's shaping campaigns through his deployment of forces. We've mentioned the French. How was he engaged with them? Rochambeau, were they at the table together? Did they make these plans together? I've always wondered about that. The French come in with the Treaty of Amidea Alliance in 1778. And then it's two and a half to three years of everybody trying to figure out how do we coordinate together because you have to go off of wind and tide with a French Navy. Everything is driven by naval power. Don't tell

Dan I said that. He'll get too excited. But everything is driven by naval power. What is the Royal Navy doing? And can the French maneuver up from their bases in the Caribbean to the colonies? So they attempt a relief of Savannah, 1779, 1780, it's an absolute bloody disaster. And that sort of tempers everyone's mindset of what are we looking for. So Washington really, really, really wants New York. That's what he wants. He is not forgiven himself for 1776. He wants to take New York. He wants to cooperate with the French. There's an attempt to cooperate with a French in Rhode Island in 79. it doesn't come off well, mostly due to weather. So with these little moments of, hey, let's try to make this thing work.

Oh, we can't make it work. Let's try to find this moment. You know, it didn't work out. We weren't able to offload the troops in time. And so 1781 is this moment of Washington is going to retake New York. But then they get intelligence that Cornwallis has told Clinton in New York, hey, I'm at Yorktown. This is my force. Come pick me up because I'm in a very vulnerable position.

And Washington takes another one of his risks. Yorktown is not a given. It is not a given that you're going to move 9,000 troops over land and sea in about three weeks, and then lay siege to a garrison. And so this is where he and Rochambe and the Camp d'A stang of the naval forces sort of come this agreement of, A, we're going to make, we're going to do this thing. And the French have to go win naval supremacy. You have to have the battle of the capes.

it is a tactical draw, a storm comes in, blows everybody out to sea, that's good enough. Sometimes a draw is good enough, and it means that the British cannot reinforce, and they can't get off the Yorktown Peninsula. But the boldness of that endeavor is remarkable. I mean, most Americans, I would venture to say, don't understand that the final play of the revolution requires enormous amounts of marching troops hundreds and hundreds of miles. I live in a place in outside north of New York, and there's a place called French Hill right down down the street. That's where the French lived, you know, coming back from Virginia. But they were having to move from New England where they got up those ships all the way down the eastern seaboard in order to get to Yorktown. That's a bad night for a military leader to realize he's up against that. But that's Washington.

And that's also warfare in the 18th century. We tend to do armchair quarterbacking of, oh, why couldn't they just move this force over here and do that? Yeah. Well, because geography, that's why. It's insane. Looking at the feats that it took to move British troops into Western Pennsylvania in the 1750s is it is a crazy power projection. It's incredible what these people were able to do. And that's what Washington, the strength of this alliance, is showing that, yes, we are going to move troops from Rhode Island and New York and New Hampshire to Virginia. Yeah. Multiple land routes, multiple sea routes, and with siege equipment, all to converge in space and time at one point. And they do it, and that's remarkable. I always say, if you can do, in 18th, 19th century warfare, if you can do the small things well, a.k.a. move one body of troops and things from point A. to point B at the time that you need to,

you're going to do the big things well. Doing fundamentals is the key to 18th, 19th century warfare. You're answering my question, and the broad question asked by this episode, which is, was he a good strategist? I think everything you're saying was, yes, indeed he was, because even the battles that he's losing, he's reacting as if playing multi-level chess. He's moving his troops around. He's advancing his plan, you know, along a timeline larger than what is day-to-day, for sure. He's doing the work to envision this whole effort as it goes, which is incredible, given the lack of resources that he starts out with, for sure, and always has. The big question to me, and I think this is the problem with him not sitting down in writing

and memoirs, is we never understand how he grew as a person throughout this war so that he delivers that to becoming the president. It's a really fascinating journey that we just can't be sure about. And it's made doubly difficult by the fact that those around him, if they write about it at the time, it's reliable. Washington becomes a huge post-war figure, you know, just larger than life. So the post-war writings, you really have to take with a massive grain, like a mountain of salt. Right.

Because this is a guy who now has, he's outlived all of his detractors, his naysayers, rose to be, you know, not just the general that creates the country, but then the first president. And it's just this town oversees the constitutional convention, this towering figure. And so when people are writing about him after his death, they're writing about that Washington, not the Washington who is sitting there at 1776 going, I don't have enough troops. What do I do? I don't even know if I can trust half my generals. I'm not sure of this situation.

We project upon him the psychology that we assume is necessary to get through that stuff. But I'm sure there were many more nooks and crannies of insecurities and fear, sadness, depression. I mean, the man was full of emotion. We know that. And all of that goes into really who is this person? that proves to be a legendary figure, deservedly so, in my opinion. Yes. Again, I think we need to temper ourselves with, he is a human, and he's filled with human flaws. And I think he would probably be one of the first to say that greatness was not

a thing that he aspired towards. I think he wanted, he desperately wanted to be a good leader. He wanted to be liked. He really wanted to be respected. But his most remarked, features is where he turns greatness away. Where he says, I don't want more power. Interesting. Any time in military history where someone turns aside an opportunity for more power is a moment of note where he, at the end of the war, he resigns his commission to the Congress. He says farewell to his army. He does not opt to even ask to remain.

Hey, I'll be a general in charge of this, whatever this U.S. army is going to be for the future republic. He steps aside from power. He steps aside from the presidency after his terms. He routinely just wants to get back to sort of living and normal life, whatever that would even look like. And he never really gets that just a little bit before his time. The irony is that this very ambitious young man ends up, you know, be careful what you ask for. And this guy becomes a mythical god and he didn't even mean to, you know. And in that regard, I think we can walk away from the subject for the time being saying,

Humility, as I mentioned before, emerges as an enormous word, which is such an important factor in a real leader. And you see it all over his record. And then, of course, as a statesman and things that are famous about him. But I think in even his reactions on battlefield or staring at maps, humility was a big part of that as well. I would agree. And tempered with also the knowledge that sometimes hard decisions really do have to be made. Even if they're not right, they have to be made. That is one of the injunctions of sort of military life is that hard decisions have to be made. The buck literally does stop at the top. So as much as he was criticized by all of his subordinates, they were not the ones making those decisions.

He had to make them and live with them for the rest of his life. And his ability to see that, I think, is one of his great strong points. What a surprise. We've come up with a positive outlook on George Washington. That's two Americans talking about it. Major Jonathan Bratton is an engineer officer and army historian who has joined us for several episodes on our revolutionary series. Please have a listen. Thank you so much, Jonathan.

Thank you so much. It's been an absolute joy to be on here, and I really appreciate the opportunity. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great,

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