Writers Read: D.W. Buffa

The Dark Backward is among D.W. Buffa's more recent novels to be released. The story revolves around not just the strangest case William Darnell had ever tried;

it was the strangest case ever tried by any lawyer anywhere. It was impossible to explain; or rather, impossible to believe. The defendant, who did not speak English or any other language anyone could identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed, and charged with murder, rape and incest. He was given the name Adam, and Adam, as Darnell comes to learn, is more intelligent, quicker to learn, than anyone he has ever met. Adam, he learns to his astonishment, is a member of an ancient civilization that has remained undiscovered for more than three thousand years.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Here is Buffa's take on The Life of George Washington by Washington Irving:

When George Washington died, just weeks before the end of the l8th century, an eminent British statesman, Lord Brougham, wrote: “The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history.” He then added: “It will be the duty of the historian and the sage of all nations, to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.”

This is the last sentence written in Washington Irving’s biography of George Washington, the first volume of which was published in l855. The fifth, and last volume, was published four years later in l859, sixty years after Washington’s death, and a year before the American Civil War. It was then still possible to entertain the hope that veneration for Washington would remain the measure for the progress made in the wisdom and virtue of Americans. The example of Abraham Lincoln, with his invocation of “our fathers,” seemed to prove the possibility.

For a long time Washington and Lincoln were seen as the models of what American greatness and nobility meant. More than what they had done, the kind of men they had been, was thought to be the standard by which to judge our own best efforts. Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday were both made national holidays, the only American statesmen to be so honored. Then, when our own early history became ancient, when the American Founding and the American Civil War began to recede further back in time and became part of a largely unremembered past, their example no longer seemed quite so relevant, and nothing like so urgent. The twentieth century, which some called the century of the common man, was less interested in the unique achievements of uniquely gifted human beings, and more concerned with what normal, average, people might be able to do. The two national holidays, now become archaic, were eliminated, replaced with just one, Presidents' Day, which celebrated everyone who had ever held the office, all of them treated with equal regard. Washington and Lincoln were no better, and no worse, than Warren Harding or Donald Trump.

Among the important documents Washington Irving included in the appendix to his biography is the statement issued by President John Adams on the death of George Washington. Remarkably close to what Lord Brougham had written, it carried an implicit warning about the future: “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.”

Yes, precisely; as long as our history shall be read. Adams might have added, so long as the history that is written tells the story as it was meant to be told. The history that Washington Irving writes is not the history written now. The story of Washington’s formative years, the history of the American Revolution, the history of Washington’s presidency, are told with all the detail anyone could want; but the details - the events, the decisions Washington made or did not make - are secondary, as it were, to the character of the man. Irving wants to tell us what there was about Washington that invariably led him to put the interests of his country over any of his own. He writes about the “wisdom and virtue” that marked the life of Washington in ways which, to eyes grown used to the small ambitions and tawdry corruptions of self-serving politicians, seem at times almost unbelievable.

Washington had at his birth in 1732 a background few others could claim: a family that traced itself back through six centuries of English history. “Hereditary rank may be an illusion; but hereditary virtue gives a patent of innate nobleness beyond all blazoners of Herald’s College.” Despite being part of Virginia’s landed aristocracy, Washington never attempted the “learned languages.” He studied mathematics and became an expert surveyor; so good that, when he was only sixteen, he made a survey of the Fairfax estate, the largest estate in Virginia, a property so large it took weeks to cross it on horseback. His knowledge of the territory was so extensive that, a few years later, he was attached to the British forces under General Braddock in the French and Indian war. Ignoring Washington’s advice about what the Indians were likely to do, Braddock led his men into a lethal ambush in which twenty-six of his eighty-six officers were killed and thirty-six wounded; two hundred of the rank and file lost their lives. Washington should have been killed. Two horses were shot out from under him, and four bullets passed through his coat without any harm. Years later, the Indian chief who led the attack, told Washington that, watching what happened, he and the other chieftains had decided that he must be the favorite of the Great Spirit who ruled over all of them.

Washington’s name was known everywhere. Elected to the legislature, his installation was greeted “by a singular testament of respect.” The Speaker “returned thanks for his distinguished military service.” Washington was so moved he could not speak. “Sit down, Mr. Washington,” he was told, “your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the powers of any language I possess.” When the discontent of the colonies with England required concerted action, Washington was sent, along with Patrick Henry and Edmund Randolph, to Philadelphia to meet with representatives from the other colonies. The fifty one delegates were, in the judgement of John Adams,“such an assembly as never before came together on a sudden, in any part of the world.” Out of that assembly, Patrick Henry thought Rutledge of South Carolina the best orator, but “if you speak of solid information and sound judgement,” Washington had been the greatest man there.

When peaceful efforts failed and the war began, Washington knew what he would do. “It is my full intention, if needful, to devote my life and fortune to the cause.” No one doubted he would do what he said, or that he should be put in command of the American forces. It is curious, the way Washington was seen by others, the remarkable first impression he made. When the wife of John Adams saw him for the first time, she wrote to her husband, describing what she had seen: “Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face. The lines of Dryden instantly occurred to me:
“‘Mark his majestic fabric! He’s a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine;
His soul’s the deity that lodges there:
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.’”
The lines of Dryden! And we talk about all the progress we have made! We ought to be talking about how it is possible that the men and women who led this country at the beginning knew so much more than we do now what makes someone worthy of admiration.

When the war was over and independence had been won, Congress wanted “to produce some national reward for his imminent services.” Washington respectfully declined the offer, “jealously maintaining the satisfaction of having served his country at the sacrifice of his private interests.” That sacrifice was just beginning. Independence had been won; the question now was whether the Americans could govern themselves. In the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, and for three months, under the watchful supervision of George Washington, the unanimous choice to preside over their deliberations, engaged in an exhaustive examination of how to create a government to protect, instead of destroy, the rights of its citizens. The Constitution was written; it had to be ratified by the states. It was approved, but in some of the states only “by a mere majority,” and only then because it was generally understood that the executive office - the presidency - would be held by Washington himself. By the unanimous vote of the new electoral college, George Washington became the first president of the United States. The country felt safe; Washington felt like a “culprit, who is going to his place of execution.”

Two things were needed immediately: someone who could put the country’s finances on a solid basis, and someone who could deal effectively with England, France, and Spain, the three countries which still retained a presence in North American. Washington chose Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, two men with widely different views of the kind of government the country should have. Hamilton had made no secret of his belief that the “idea of a perfect equality of political rights among the citizens, exclusive of a permanent or hereditary distinction,” was a proposition open to serious doubt. The new Constitution, however, deserved “the good wishes of every good man, whatever might be his theoretic doubts….” He meant what he said. He was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, the greatest single defense of the Constitution ever put in print.

Jefferson had not been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention; he had been in Paris, awaiting what he hoped would be the end of both the French monarchy and the French aristocracy. He was alarmed to discover there was no limit to how often the president could be re-elected. Perpetual re-eligibility meant, in his mind, the inevitability of perpetual rule. It was only a matter of time before the president became a monarch, and, he was convinced, no one was more interested in having this happen than Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, for his part, thought Jefferson more than a little insane. “The idea of introducing monarchy or aristocracy in this country…is one of those visionary things that none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will believe.”

What began as a disagreement over political principles soon devolved into a personal hatred made all the more intense by the French Revolution. Jefferson did not just favor the French Revolution, he hoped, according to Irving, that “revolution would be established and spread all over the world.” It did not matter the cost. When thousands were put to death during the Jacobin reign of terror, Jefferson thought it unfortunate, but rather than the revolution “should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated; were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is.” For all his hatred of monarchy, however, Jefferson never included in his condemnations the one man who, had he wanted to, might have become an American monarch. When Washington seemed to have decided against a second term, Jefferson begged him to reconsider. No one else could stop the country from tearing itself apart; only Washington in the presidency guaranteed against the fear of a monarchy he believed Hamilton was plotting to bring about.

Washington agreed to serve a second term and was, for the second time, elected by the unanimous vote of the electoral college. The country would stay united, and the war between Hamilton and Jefferson would only get worse. Jefferson might believe that the French Revolution was only a continuation of the fight for the rights of man that had started with the American Revolution; Hamilton thought only a fool could fail to see the differences.

“Would to Heaven we could discern, in the mirror of the French affairs, the same decorum, the same gravity, the same virtue, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution!” The difference between them was “no less than that between liberty and license.”

Hamilton might write about the evils of the French Revolution, but when France declared war on England, the country followed Jefferson in support of France, and turned not just on Hamilton, but on Washington. The President’s insistence on a policy of strict neutrality was treated with contempt. It was nothing less than “a daring assumption of power; an open manifestation of partiality for England and hostility to France.” Washington had known what would happen; he had understood that “in withstanding the public infatuation with France,” he might lose all his popularity; “but he put it at hazard without hesitation; and in so doing set a magnanimous example for his successors in office to endeavor to follow.” An endeavor, it is perhaps needless to remark, few of his successors have thought advisable to attempt themselves.

After eight years in the presidency, Washington was finally able to retire to his beloved Mount Vernon. A few months later, war with France suddenly a real possibility, John Adams insisted that only Washington could lead the army. His answer was as simple as it was direct: “As my whole life as been dedicated to thy country in one shape or another, for the poor remains of it, it is not an object to control for quiet and ease, when all that is valuable is at stake, further than to be satisfied that the sacrifice I should make of these, is acceptable and desired by my country.”

It will no doubt be objected by some that Washington owned slaves and does not deserve our full respect. This is to be expected from those who learn their history without bothering to read a page of what was written at the time. Washington, and Jefferson as well, inherited vast plantations, which had for generations been worked by slaves, but both thought slavery an abomination that needed, somehow, to be ended. In September of 1786, Washington wrote to John F. Mercer that it was “among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.” Eleven years later, in August of 1797, he wrote to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, “I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual abolition of slavery. It might prevent much future mischief.”

Two years later, the legislature still having done nothing to abolish slavery, Washington freed his own, and did it in a way that, once freed, his former slaves would be cared for. In his will he directed that those who were unable to support themselves because of infirmities or old age, “shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live.” Those still children were to be taught to read and write and “brought up to some useful occupation.” There was a specific provision for his “mulatto man, William.” He was free to do whatever he wished, but, because he was now incapable of walking or any “active employment,” he could also remain there, at Mount Vernon. Whatever he chose to do, he was to be given a fixed annuity during his natural life, “as testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful service during the revolutionary war.”

Who was George Washington? Washington Irving had an answer: “The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer irregularities, and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man.”

If we do not honor George Washington as much as we once did, it proves only that we have, ourselves, become incapable of honor. Washington Irving’s biography is the perfect place to start if we want to remember what greatness and honorable conduct really means.