John Adams was not alone in harboring a lifelong mistrust of Wash­ington's "apotheosis." For the skeptics Washington was, beyond his real merits as commander in chief and statesman, exclusively the exponent and symbol of the nation; but he was not its creator. Even during the war Adams still vehemently disputed the idea that if outstanding leaders of the revolution were lost by death or corruption, the course of the Revo­lution could be changed in some way. He included Washington in his judgment, for only the people's "sentiments" were determining.²⁷

Washington was merely "the creature of a principle, and that principle was the union of the colonies,"²⁸ and Washington's character was to be praised only as an "exemplification of the American character."²⁹ In the same way, when Adams was president, his eulogy for Washington in 1799 recalled the greatness of this man from the aspect of an exemplary found­er's virtue, an element important to pass on to posterity. "His example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citi­zens, and men, not only in the present age but in future generations as long as our history shall be read."³⁰ Death freed Washington the hero from an awkward situation. For toward the end of his life he had strayed into the tense field of partisan confrontations and had been seen by many as a tool of the Federalists. In 1798, Adams, a victim of Hamilton's po­litical tactics, had named the old general commander in chief of a de facto Federalist army, with Hamilton as inspector general. This measure had given new nourishment to the widespread fears of a military putsch, with Hamilton as dictator. But Washington's death immediately restored him to his status as pater patriae, the Cincinnatus of Mount Vernon, and the Moses of his chosen people in the New World.³¹     

[Part 2 will appear next week]

NOTES  

1. Compare Dunn, "Seventeenth Century English Historians of America," in Seven­teenth Century America, ed. J. M. Smith (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 195-225. On Ameri­can historiography, see M. Kraus, The Writing of American History (Norman, Okla., 1953); E. N. Saveth, ed., Understanding the American Past (Boston, 1954); D. D. van Tassel, Recording America's Past: An Interpretation of the Development of Historical Stud­ies in America, 1607-1884 (Chicago, 1960); H. Wish, The American Historian (New York, 1960). For general discussions of the problem of American historical apocalypse, see C. I. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise (Urbana, Ill.); M. Eliade, "Paradis et utopie: Géogra­phie mythique et Eschatologie," in Vom Sinn der Utopie (Zurich, 1964); H. R. Niebuhr, The Kingdom of Cod in America (New York, 1959); M. Holloway, Heavens on Earth (New York, 1966); Tuveson, Redeemer Nation.

2. Miller and Johnson, eds., Puritans, I, 163.

3. P. Miller, New England Mind, II, 135; compare also Craven, Legend of the Founding Fathers, 9-20.

4. P. Miller, New England Mind, II, 189.

5. Ibid., 135.

6. Wector, Hero in America, 42.

7. Ibid.