Though Washington did not have a classical education, he nevertheless evoked comparisons to the best of the ancients
The paradox of george washington is that he was the least classically educated of the first four presidents but also the most Roman of them in character—and was seen as such by his contemporaries. Washington’s peers threw themselves into ancient Rome, consciously emulating the great statesmen, philosophers, and poets. Washington, by contrast, had it thrown at him, with his countrymen constantly comparing him to the best of the ancient Romans. It was his fate to become “the most thoroughly classicized figure of his generation,” according to one specialist in American classicism. Indeed, there eventually would be not one but two biographies of
Washington published in America that were written in Latin. Washington would not have been able to read these accounts, because unlike John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others, he never learned Latin or Greek. Nor is there a record of him reading many ancient works in translation.
Even so, the history and characters of ancient Rome would shape Washington’s life, partly through his own aspirations and partly through the view his contemporaries had of him. Because ancient history provided much of the political vocabulary of his time, he would use it despite not being schooled in it. In his youth, he had been interested in Julius Caesar and had read a bit about him. Later, as an adult, he sought to model his public persona upon the Roman politician Cato—upright, honest, patriotic, self-sacrificing, and a bit remote.
Then, fighting for American independence, Washington had a new Roman role thrust upon him, that of the celebrated general Fabius, who defeated an invader from overseas mainly by avoiding battle and wearing out his foe. Finally, after the war, he would play his greatest role, the military commander who relinquished power and returned to his farm—an American Cincinnatus.
In the Style of Fabius
Of all these Roman roles, the one that had the greatest effect on American history was the one with which Washington was least comfortable—that is, becoming the American Fabius during the War for Independence.
It was not an easy adjustment. In 1776, George Washington still had a lot to learn. As a general, he would suffer a series of terrible military setbacks in the Second Half of that year—but to his credit, he reacted by reflecting and then adjusting. If the best measure of a general is the ability to grasp the nature of the war faced and then to make changes, Washington was among the greatest the United States has ever had. This is not perceived even today because Washington scored few victories during the entire war. But it was not a war that would be won by battles. It was a different sort of conflict, as he came to understand while he slowly, almost grudgingly, learned to fight in a modified Fabian style.
As with almost all things classical, the Roman general Fabius was better known to Washington and his peers than he is now. He was celebrated by Rome for defeating an invading Hannibal by refusing to give battle. The legendary Hannibal of Carthage began his attack from his base in Spain. In 218 BC, he marched through today’s France and then crossed the Alps into northern Italy, where he won two overwhelming victories against Roman armies. Panicking, the reeling Romans turned to Fabius, declaring him dictator for the period of the emergency.
Hannibal desperately needed more victories to encourage non-Roman cities on the Italian peninsula to join his side. Understanding this imperative, Fabius denied him a decisive battle, instead attacking Hannibal’s supply lines and foraging parties. Taking advantage of local knowledge, he tended to keep his forces in the hills, where Hannibal’s cavalry would be less effective than on the plains. Shadowing Hannibal’s soldiers but not attacking, Plutarch writes, Fabius “gave them no rest, but kept them in continual alarm.” Hannibal ranged over Italy, even fighting to the walls of Rome, but never managed to win decisively, and finally left Italy in 203 BC, sailing back to Carthage empty-handed after nearly 15 years of campaigning. Hannibal was certainly the more effective tactician—one of the greatest of all time—but Fabius must be counted the more successful strategist.
To be sure, learning to fight indirectly in the style of Fabius was not an instinctive step for Washington. As a soldier, he was naturally aggressive and inclined to be impatient. But like everyone else, generals are altered by the extravagant pressures of war, and Washington, relatively young at the age of 43 when he took top command, observed, reflected, and adjusted more than did most senior commanders.
The result was that the George Washington of 1777 was not the same man he had been in 1775, when he was chosen to lead the new, as yet unformed Army of the United States. At the war’s outset, he did not understand two of its key elements: the role of the militia in the fight and the kind of war he needed to pursue. As a result, he suffered a series of setbacks in those two years, and so by early 1777 was forced to figure out a different strategy. He would pursue that revamped Fabian approach for several years, only occasionally offering battle when politics forced him to or when the British left an opening.
Washington, depicted before the Second Battle of Trenton (opposite), and his model Fabius (above), whose canny understanding of strategy may have helped Washington win the war.
GEORGE WASHINGTON BEFORE THE BATTLE OF TRENTON, BY JOHN TRUMBULL, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST OF GRACE WILKES, 1922.
OPPOSITE: FABIUS MAXIMUS, 1792–94, THE MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH DIVISION OF ART, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ca.
Stringing the British Along
Washington also made a parallel shift by coming to better appreciate how to use his militiamen. They may have been weak reeds in frontal assaults, but they could be militarily effective when played to their strengths. Let them fight near their own towns, amid familiar fields, forests, and hills, and they would prove more resilient. Encourage them to take on isolated British patrols. Let them slip home to tend to their farms when things were quiet. It was not a recipe for conventional military glory, but it did point toward a possible winning strategy. Attacking British foraging parties and supply convoys had more military impact than one might think. While battles happen only occasionally, an army must eat every day. For much of the time, on any given day, the real war was these small skirmishes with isolated British units. “We have had a pretty amusement known by the name of foraging or fighting for our daily bread,” a Scottish redcoat named James Murray reported in a letter. “As the rascals are skulking about the whole country, it is impossible to move with any degree of safety without a pretty large escort.” One militia tactic was to leave cattle out in the open and then ambush the British as they tried to capture the herd. The American irregulars were so successful in New Jersey, crucial ground in the war, that eventually the British operating there had most of their supplies shipped by water from New York City.
The longer such skirmishing lasted, the more the British would falter. They might lose two men one day, 10 the next, and then see 40 taken prisoner in an ambush on the third. When the British ejected the American army from New York City in August and September of 1776, they had fielded 31,600 soldiers. By February of 1777, just five months later, they had just 14,000, with the rest simply gone—killed, badly wounded, seriously ill, captured, or deserted. The British became painfully conscious of this new American approach. “Though it was once the fashion of this army to treat them in the most contemptible light, they are now become a formidable enemy,” a British colonel in New Jersey unhappily reported to his father in England.
Stringing the British along was, in fact, precisely the right strategy. It took advantage of the abilities of American forces and minimized their weaknesses. Moreover, the British could not figure out an effective way to counter the Fabian approach. That said, sometimes battles can be very important. The American victory at Saratoga late in 1777 brought the French into the war and so reshaped the entire conflict. After that, time was on Washington’s side—if he could hold together his army and not lose it in the field. Americans generally endorsed the approach, especially because they saw him face down four British commanders during the war.
The Noblest Roman
Near the end of the war, in the spring of 1783, Washington put down a near-mutiny by his officers, angry and frustrated by their lack of pay and talking about overthrowing civilian oversight of the military. He could have easily led them against Congress, but he was determined not to become the American version of Julius Caesar. In December of that year, he rode to Annapolis, Maryland, where Congress was meeting, and resigned his commission, evoking parallels to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who according to legend had two opportunities to seize absolute power, but declined each time. A private citizen once again, Washington went home to Mount Vernon to celebrate Christmas. Through the crucible of war he had proven himself to be the noblest Roman of them all.
Medals from the late 18th century and early 19th century honor Washington in the neoclassical style.
PROFILE: warrior and sage
MEDAL, c. 1777, MVLA, GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. STANLEY DEFOREST SCOTT. BUST ON A PEDESTAL: WASHINGTON BENEVOLENT SOCIETY MEDAL, BY JOHN REICH, 1808, MVLA, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Deforest Scott Photos by Tom Mulvaney
Thomas E. Ricks is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is First Principles: What Americans Learned From the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, from which this article is adapted.
George Washington, by Joseph Wright, 1783-1785, MVLA, Purchase, 1959. Photo by Taylor Lewis