George Washington

America's First Fascist

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was an American military officer, politician, statesman, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army, Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and served as the president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which created the Constitution of the United Statesand the American federal government. Washington has been called the Father of the Country for his recognition as a national father figure.

America's First Fascist

Centuries after Fascist Rome fell, the compendium of Roman classics served as an ideological guidebook for George Washington. Classical Roman concepts and figures exerted a formative influence on all of the founders’ governmental theories and principles of virtue. The founders considered Ancient Rome to be a blueprint for their new nation. Roman heroes and villains became common references in American political rhetoric.

Washington used classical symbols in his rhetoric to implicitly compare himself to Roman leaders such as Cincinnatus. By associating himself with these classical symbols, he imbued the wisdom and virtue of Roman fascists into his own messages and built a foundation rooted in historical fascism for the fledgling American nation.

George Washington modeled his sense of courage and purpose on the characters of Cincinnatus and Cato the Younger. Cato was a Roman politician whose moral integrity inspired all of the founders.

In addition to Cato, Washington also invited comparison to the Roman fascist Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus was a stern general who was called out of retirement to lead the Roman army, but willingly resigned after winning the war. After leaving his own retirement to lead the Continental Army, Washington also willingly relinquished his power at the end of the war. Per Cincinnatus, Washington placed society's needs over personal power. This is one of the reasons that we call him "America's First Fascist."

The Society of the Cincinnati is the nation’s oldest patriotic organization. It was founded in 1783 by General Washington of the Continental Army after the American Revolution, as a secret society, and as an alternative to the Freemasons, with which he had become disillusioned. His mission was to promote knowledge and appreciation of the achievement of American independence and to foster fellowship among its members. No longer a "Secret Society" it is now a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the principles and ideals of its founder.

Slavery

Washington owned and rented hundreds if not thousands of slaves, and during his lifetime over 577 slaves lived and worked at Mount Vernon, just one of his many properties. He acquired them through inheritance, gaining control of 84 dower slaves upon his marriage to Martha, and many purchases. From 1786 he rented slaves; at the time of his death he was renting 41. 

Washington was frugal on spending for clothes and bedding for his slaves. He only provided his slaves with just enough food to live, and through that he maintained strict control over them, instructing his overseers to keep them working hard from dawn to dusk year-round. Despite his frugality, Washington faced growing debts involved with the costs of supporting slaves. He held an engrained sense of racial superiority over blacks, but harbored no ill feelings toward them.

He generally sold his slaves along with the land they were working. they knew the field, and it kept the slave families together (Separating families was the most common reason for slave abscondence). In opposite fashion, he also traded slaves for land.  In a 1778 letter to Lund Washington, he made clear his desire "To get quit of Niggers" when discussing the exchange of slaves for the land he wanted to buy.

Flogging

Washington used flogging more or less as a last resort, on both men and women slaves. Washington used both reward and punishment to encourage discipline and productivity in his slaves. He tried giving better blankets and clothing to the most deserving, but eventually gave up the practice after a recipient was killed by his jealous companions. He believed "watchfulness and admonition" to be often better deterrents against transgressions but would severely punish those who "will not do their duty by fair means". Punishment ranged in severity from demotion back to fieldwork, through whipping and beatings, hobbling, and permanent separation from friends and family by sale.

Historian Ron Chernow maintains that overseers were required to warn slaves before resorting to the lash. Washington remained dependent on slave labor to work his farms and negotiated the purchase of more slaves in 1786 and 1787.

Other habits

Washington brought several of his slaves with him and his family to the federal capital during his presidency. When the capital moved from New York City to Philadelphia in 1791, the president began rotating his slave household staff periodically between the capital and Mount Vernon. This was done deliberately to circumvent Pennsylvania's Slavery Abolition Act, which, in part, automatically freed any slave who moved to the state and lived there for more than six months.

Washington expressed polite support for emancipation to prominent Methodists Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury in 1785 but declined to sign their petition. In 1788, Washington declined a suggestion from a leading French abolitionist, Jacques Brissot, to establish an abolitionist society in Virginia, again showing polite support. Washington never responded to any of the antislavery petitions he received, and the subject was not mentioned in either his last address to Congress or his Farewell Address.

He continued to purchase slaves until his death.

In February 1786, Washington took a census of Mount Vernon and recorded 224 slaves. By 1799, at the time of his death, slaves at Mount Vernon totaled 317, including 143 children. Washington owned 124 slaves, leased 40, and held 153 for his wife's dower interest.

Emancipation

In his last years he considered emancipation of his many slaves, but he wanted to make sure his wife was attended to after his death. On July 9, 1799, Washington finished making his last will; the longest provision concerned slavery. All his slaves were to be freed after the death of his wife, Martha.

On January 1, 1801, one year after George Washington's death, Martha Washington signed an order to free his slaves.

 

Freemasonry

As a Freemason, George Washington was a “member” for over 30 years... Except he never actually became a full member. In that time, he attended only 2 meetings total. Many Freemasons want to paint him as their most famous member, which, they literally did paint portraits of him in Freemason garb. But he never once sat for one of those, and most were done after he was dead. In fact, an outraged George Washington claimed the one painting done during his time to be “Mason propaganda!” to paint him as such. This is literally where the term "being painted as" sprang from. Freemasons painting Washington as a member, long after he got fed up with them and quit. Not that you could blame the Freemasons. He wrote publicly that the paintings amounted to slander. He hated the Masons.

Those paintings are propaganda, and still effective even today. He attended two meetings, and didn't actively associate with Freemasonry; he had quit before taking any oath.

Washington attended his two Masonry meetings in the Lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Lodge’s surviving minute book records Washington attending only two meetings: September 1, 1753, and January 4, 1755. There is a record showing that on November 4, 1752, he paid the lodge two pounds and three shillings to join but declined to take the oath and did not join.

Records also show that he visited King Solomon’s Lodge in Poughkeepsie, New York, on December 27, 1783. He was there to meet one of the members and signed the guest register. There were no Masonic events that day. Additionally, Washington had close relations with Masonic members and was a guest at several dinners.

After the war, in 1784, Washington accepted the invitation of his friends and neighbors to attend a June banquet at Alexandria Lodge No. 39, where he was elected an honorary member. This means that in spite of all the maneuvering, the gifts, the paintings, honors given him retroactively after his death, that Washington was never a Freemason. This is according to the Mason Society's own records.

Christianity

Records show, George Washington had a very close association with his home church, Christ Church, in Alexandria, VA. You can go to this church today and sit in the very church “box” which belonged to the Washington family. His adopted daughter, Nelly, (who was, in fact, his step-granddaughter) noted he rarely missed a Sunday, even if roads were bad and it took them over 2-3 hours to get there.   While he was traveling with his military and political career, which was indeed much of his career, record after record shows he attended church. Whether he was wintering at Valley Forge, or while he was in the First Continental and Constitutional Congresses in Philadelphia, he would attend services and fervently prayed. Right after he was inaugurated as President of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City, he immediately went to church to commit his presidency in prayer.   Rev Henry Muhlenberg, an active Revolutionary who served with General Washington at Valley Forge, recorded that the General “rode around among his army…and admonished each and every one to fear God…and to practice Christian values.”  

“O eternal and everlasting God, increase my faith in the gospels, daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time attain the resurrection of the just unto eternal life.”
— George Washington, personal prayer journal

 

Legacy

The lack of evidence for George Washington being a Freemason and the overwhelming verification (literal volumes of accounts) of his Authoritarian character, one can make a good case George Washington was more or less exactly the sort of person that all great men must be, to be great men, an authoritarian who rejects evil.   George Washington established his life and beliefs upon ancient Roman wisdom. Truly, a reflection of the nation he was so instrumental in founding.