PORTRAITS OF GREATNESS: WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN

Most men of note in history are either very great or very good—but not both (the very few who meet both criteria, such as Augustine, Jerome, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, and Leo the Great, are Catholic saints).  Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Marc Antony, Charlemagne, and Emperor Otto the Great were certainly great men—and they were just as certainly not good men.  George Washington and Abraham Lincoln bear the distinction of being among the few men (or women) in history not canonized who can claim with full justice to be both great and good.  Indeed, the more I have studied their lives, the more I have become convinced that America must be a great nation—it could not be otherwise with such a Father and such a Restorer.
I will not in this article attempt to give comprehensive biographies of these two magnificent men, but instead I will list several facts or instances about the characters or lives of each that justify the admiration we should all feel for them.
One of the modern myths is that the Founders—including Washington—were nearly all deists.  This is frankly ridiculous, particularly in the case of Washington.  One story will illustrate this.  Before the opening of the Continental Congress which would ultimately sign the fateful Declaration of Independence, the delegates said a prayer.  Suddenly his fellow delegates (who were standing) realized that Washington was unselfconsciously kneeling on the ground as he prayed, in an attitude of intense devotion.
Washington was completely fearless.  He was not the sort of leader who led from the back.  In fact, his aides would often panic because, charging into battle, they would find themselves outstripped by Washington, charging ahead, heedless of his companions, his sword lifted, urging his great white horse ever faster.  Remarkably, Washington never suffered the slightest wound in battle, even though, during one battle in his youth, he had two horses shot from under him and his coat and hat both had bullet-holes.
Everyone who fought in the Revolutionary War acknowledged that the war was won entirely dependent on Washington.  Facing an Empire’s professional army and navy with a small band of raw and often seriously undisciplined volunteers, Washington won miraculous victories with great ingenuity, pulled his suffering men through nightmare after nightmare, and brought them back from the verge of full mutiny multiple times through sheer force of character.
Washington was open-minded in a way absolutely exceptional for his time.  He would shock and disgust his fellow colonists during his days as a surveyor by seemingly deliberately seeking out the company of Indians and enjoying their hospitality, including smoking the peace pipe around the fire.  And though Washington may have originally struggled with the racist or prejudiced views so common among slave owners and English colonists of his time, he certainly overcame them.  The Revolutionary Army was fully racially integrated, and one of his most famous, effective, and heroic regiments, nicknamed “Washington’s Immortals,” had Indians, blacks, and whites in its ranks.  Washington has more than aide recruited from the ranks of Irish immigrants as well.
Furthermore, Washington (behind the scenes) is reported as having pushed hard for slavery to be outlawed under the Constitution, though he was himself a slave-owner.  When that failed (although black men did have the right to vote), Washington showed how committed he was to his principles by drawing up a plan to sell his dearly beloved Mt. Vernon so that he would be forced to free all of his slaves.  When (in the post-Revolution impoverishment of the new United States) that plan also failed, since he could find no buyers, Washington wrote it into his will that his slaves were to be freed after his death.
A guest to Mt. Vernon related a story that shows how humble and caring the world-famous general was.  The guest had a cough.  The entire evening, George Washington seemed seriously concerned about his guest’s health, but the guest insisted that he was not very ill and would not take anything for the cough.  In the middle of the night, the guest was awakened to find Washington, only half-dressed, standing there holding a bowl of gruel that he had made himself and brought to his guest, so concerned about the guest’s cough that he couldn’t wait until morning.
Washington never had children of his own, a source of great grief to him, but besides the great title “Father of his country” Washington was a personal father to many.  He called many of his young aides in the Revolution “my boy” and was a mentor and affectionate guide to them, especially to Alexander Hamilton and the French Lafayette (it is said that Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, who never seemed to meet without fighting, only once ever made a truce—when they heard Washington was going to retire from public life, at which point the two rushed together to beg Washington to continue in public life).  Washington also raised two of his wife Martha’s grandchildren in his later years, including Nelly Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis, named for him.  A letter from the president to his niece after she had written of a ball she had been at contains affectionate teasing, advice on marriage and finding a mate, and a truly fatherly wish for her to have “every blessing. . .bestowed on you by yours, affectionately.”  The night before he died, Washington came to visit Nelly in her room at Mt. Vernon and bless her newborn baby. 
And Washington did what very few men (particularly men with an innately ambitious nature, as Washington had) have ever done in history—refused a crown.  He could have been absolute monarch of America.  He could have sat on a throne and ruled for his whole lifetime.  Instead, like the Roman Cincinnatus, he refused the crown and went back to his plantation.  Later, when he had served two terms as president, he voluntarily surrendered even that power and returned to farm his fields, raise his adopted grandchildren, and spend his evenings reading the Bible with his wife.  We have most of us heard the story, but it bears repeating.  Having his portrait painted by an American-born artist, King George III was told that Washington was being offered a crown.  The artist expressed his belief that the general would refuse the kingship.  George III, who had spent his whole reign trying to enforce his absolute power as much as he could, was flabbergasted.  “If he does that,” said the king, “he will be a truly great man.”  And Washington did it—for he was a truly great man.
An aspect of Washington’s character that should particularly endear him to Catholics was his open-mindedness to Catholicism.  During the Revolutionary War, he outlawed the celebration of Guy Fawkes day, because Protestants had a habit of burning the pope in effigy on that day.  Washington forbade it.  Washington was seen attending Catholic Mass more than once during his life.  A less “concretely” verifiable but still attested story is that Washington had a Catholic priest called into him just before he died, and the slaves wept, believing that the “master” had gone over to the “whore of Babylon.”  Washington’s Letter to Catholics after he became the first president proves that he had an immense respect and admiration for Catholics and their religion, however.
Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, was a man widely vilified both during his life and after his death, but, as Jesus said, “If the world hate you, remember that it hated me first.”  Lincoln, who became extremely devoted to reading the Bible toward the end of his life, must often have remembered this verse.  Certainly he did the Lord’s work against all odds.
Lincoln had many friends and friendly acquaintances among Irish and German immigrants.  He would sometimes shock “proper” upper-class ladies by retelling jokes he’d heard from Irishmen which were considered “vulgar,” but which Lincoln found hilarious.  Lincoln even owned a German-language newspaper because he thought it was so important for Whigs and then Republicans to reach out to the immigrants.  One of his major complaints about Democrats when he was first making a name for himself in politics was that the Democrats advertised themselves as the “party of immigrants”—while simultaneously passing laws which directly negatively impacted immigrants!
Lincoln was challenging the racist narrative long before he ever ran for president.  He reminded Democrats that free black men not only had the ability to vote, but actually did vote in the early days after the Constitution was ratified!  “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally,” Abe said.  As he pointed out, prejudice never stops—today it is skin color, tomorrow it is education, eventually it is whatever quality those in power do not happen to like about you.  And at the end of his life, another anecdote shows just how far he had come in his acceptance of blacks not just as a race, but as individual human beings.  Former slave Frederick Douglass was scheduled to speak at a gathering where Lincoln was also present, and he walked through the door.  Witnesses said that somber Lincoln’s face lit up.  “Here comes my friend Frederick Douglass!” he said eagerly.
Lincoln was a man dogged by ill luck and tragedy his entire life.  His first love died very young.  His brief stint in the army was riddled with trouble from senior officers, as the men under his command were notorious ruffians who beat each other up as a pastime.  He lost almost every political race he ran for until the presidency.  His wife was a very temperamental woman, who was probably clinically insane for most of her time as First Lady. Many states of the country he loved so much (including his own birthplace of Kentucky—many forget Lincoln was by birth a Southerner who spoke for most of his life with a drawl) seceded after Lincoln won the presidential race, and even before he took office and was able to do anything!  Lincoln had always hoped that a legal remedy could be found—like many of the Founding Fathers (including slave owners such as Washington) he hoped there could have been a gradual method found of making the South ever less dependent on slavery while restoring the rights blacks originally had under the Constitution.  Instead, the man who wouldn’t even go hunting because he hated to harm a living thing found himself being attacked by fellow Americans and having to orchestrate and run a bloody war.  
Lincoln believed for years that he would be assassinated.  Right after his election to the presidency, Lincoln told his wife that he feared he would never live through office—he would be killed.  For his whole life, he struggled with intense depression and self-doubt.  Yet there was no father more loving, no husband more patient, no friend more true, no politician more principled, no leader more strong.  “Honest Abe” never gave his word lightly—he had sworn to defend the Union, and he would do it, even ultimately to the shedding of his blood.
Yet Lincoln always managed to have a sense of humor, particularly when others were most hostile to him, as for instance his comment, “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”  Another time, upon being accused of being two-faced, Lincoln responded seriously, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
And his call for reunion and healing after the war shows the greatness of his soul which enabled him to forgive so much with so little evidence of repentance from the side which had wanted the war so vehemently and then lost.  “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.”  A saint could have put it no more magnanimously.
I would like to close with a quote from George Washington which, I think, encapsulates what the goal of Christendom students ought to be.  Washington said, “Truth will ultimately prevail when there is pains to bring it to light.”  (emphasis added) As Christendom students—and particularly for those in my class, soon to be Christendom graduates—we aim to bring Truth (and thus Christ) to a world which is built and dependent upon lies.  As Washington noted, Truth needs champions—if there are no brave souls ready to stand up for it against threats, penalties, and hatred, then how will it ever be heard?  Of course we know that Christ has the ultimate victory, but he chooses to act through instruments.  If we do not bring the Truth to light, the lies and the liars will continue to rule our world.  Like Washington and Lincoln, be willing to sacrifice everything you have and hold dear to advocate for Truth.  Make Truth prevail.  Take the pains to bring it to light.