Washington’s Example of Service — and the Peaceful Transfer of Power

While Ark Valley Voice will soon provide an overview of the just-concluded speech by President Joe Biden at Valley Forge, today, there is another image for Americans to recall at this moment.

A room in the Annapolis Capitol Building in Maryland is a part of American lore. It is the room where General George Washington resigned his commission as the leader of the Continental Army and went home to Mount Vernon.

A statute of General George Washington stands in the spot in the Maryland Capitol building where he resigned his military commission at the end of the Revolutionary War. Photo by Jan Wondra

It is not a large room, this rounded room painted pale yellow, with classical white columns. Visitors today enter it and come face to face with a life-size bronze statue of Washington standing where he stood the day he resigned that commission. It sounds ordinary.

It was not.

It was 1783. He had led the American army to victory against the British — defeated what was considered to be the greatest military in the world. There were calls to hand him the country. Calls to make him a king.

He refused.

It was the first of two instances in which Washington demonstrated his fealty to the Rule of Law and to the idea that this democracy* represented a new concept of governance — one of, by and for the people — where loyalty and lives were pledged to uphold the Constitution, not a person.

A painting of Washington resigning his military commission hangs in the United States Capitol and the artist who painted it called it “one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world”.

Washington went back to his beloved Mount Vernon, until 1787. Then he was called upon to become the Convention President of the Constitutional Congress that was gathering in Philadelphia to overhaul the country’s Articles of Incorporation — which had proved to be a less-than-successful governing document.

After the new Constitution was approved in 1789, he was unanimously selected to serve as the first president of this country. He then dutifully accepted a second term, as he sought to stabilize the new government under the new constitution, establishing precedents we follow to this day.

A painting of George Washington hangs in the room in the Maryland capitol building in Annapolis. Photo by Jan Wondra

On March 4, 1797, he dressed in a plain black suit, tied his hair back in a severe black bow, and walked alone down the street to Congress Hall. There, he handed off the office of president to the second President John Adams.

After his simple farewell message (which history records had the audience sobbing) “Washington ended the inauguration ceremony with an exquisite gesture: he insisted that President Adams and Vice President Jefferson exit the chamber before him, a perfect symbol that the nation’s most powerful man had now reverted to the humble status of a private citizen.”**

In each case, Washington was riding the crest of the greatest public approval of any public figure in American history. He could have demanded anything, chose to keep his commanding general, accepted a third or fourth term, or turned himself into a dictator.

He did not.

It is the highest moral lesson that could have been set; humble service that preserves democracy.

Featured image: Annapolis, Maryland waterfront, with the spire of the state capitol building where Washington resigned his military commission, in the distance. Photo by Jan Wondra.

*”Democracy” from the Greek: “demos” meaning “people” or “of the people”, and “kratos” meaning “rule”.

** from Washington, A Life, by Ron Chernow.