President's Day, 2020

Former G.W. Bush speechwriter Jonathan Horn has filled a gap in popular history by writing about George Washington's post-Presidency (March 1797 - December 1799): [bold added]

Washington retired at a time when heads of state usually only relinquished power upon their deaths. His successor, John Adams, recalled looking around the room during his inauguration and seeing people in tears.

He knew those tears weren’t for him, but that everyone was so moved by Washington surrendering power. They knew they were witnessing history.

Jonathan Horn on Washington's ownership of slaves:

It was a disappointment to Washington, I think, that he could not find a way to provide eventual freedom for all of the men, women, and children held in slavery at Mount Vernon. The will he left when he died in 1799 provided eventual emancipation for all the slaves he owned but could not do the same for the so-called dower slaves, who had come to Mount Vernon only as a result of his marriage to the widow Martha Custis. As a result, Washington died knowing that Mount Vernon had a destiny similar to that of the country he had created. Both, in a sense, would be half-slave and half-free.

(Photo from ncpa.org)

George Washington is on Mount Rushmore because he defeated the vastly superior British Army and set numerous precedents as the first Executive, including relinquishing power when Americans would have acclaimed him king.

By our standards he did not do enough personally or politically to eliminate slavery, but it's easy enough to criticize him now since there would have been no Constitution and no United States without the toleration of that peculiar institution.

I hope that those who look back on us 230 years from now will do so in context, with sympathy, and not judge some of our choices as irredeemably evil.