Revolting against tyranny: Then and now

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today’s post is by our guest contributor Dr. Mike Corgan.]

The protests against tyranny suddenly sweeping the Middle East still focus on the achievement of the Egyptian people and what they accomplished. Now the world waits to see what the army will do.

George Washington portrait by Peale
George Washington, 1776, by Charles Wilson Peale (Photographic reproduction in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

As we in the U.S. celebrate this Presidents’ Day weekend, it is well to think beyond the car and flat screen TV sales and reflect on just how lucky we were with our revolution and why we honor these two presidents.

George Washington was unquestionably the ablest military man among the Americans who chose to fight British absentee governance and taxation. Qualities far beyond his generalship immortalize his  service to democracy and his country.

When the war was over and the British had surrendered he could have been king if he wanted it. Instead he went to Congress and laid his sword on a table and said his work was done. How many other military leaders of a victorious revolutionary army have ever surrendered to civilian control like that? None–before or since. We were lucky beyond all others.

Yet again, when the army later threatened to march on Congress in Philadelphia to get promised benefits, Washington went to the plotters in Newburgh and defused the situation. He pleaded with his officers not to undo all they had stood for in the name of democracy against tyranny and force with a military show of force.

His oratory and sincerity and even his dramatic putting on of glasses and saying that he himself had grown blind in the service of his country ended the affair, many plotters leaving the meeting in tears. Our revolution succeeded in its aims for many reasons, but George Washington was one of the most important ones.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University