‘Young Washington’ Delivers a Hero’s Origin Story to a Nation Plagued by Cynicism

America is reclaiming its greatest hero at a time when qualities like patriotism and discipline are dismissed as old-fashioned. In “Young Washington,” the future first president is shown overcoming his flaws and mastering his passions to become a legend worthy of admiration for all times.“We have developed speed,” Charlie Chaplin said in 1940s “The Great Dictator,” the first time his voice was heard on film. “But we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind.”Chaplin observed a trend that led to abandoning figures like Washington as relics that America has outgrown. Yet dismissing him as a figure worthy of indifference or scorn is just as unjust as saying he was born with inherent greatness. Both tropes boil down to the same message: Trying to better ourselves is pointless.The Washington who stares up from currency and down from equestrian statues lost his father at 11. Being the second son, he had no property and, despite his protests, his mother forced him to leave school and work the farm. Although a voracious reader, he endured snickering over a lack of formal education throughout his life.Grant Wood: ‘Parson Weems’s Fable,’ 1939. Via Wikimedia Commons“Young Washington” introduces us to this young man: Blundering, headstrong, and overconfident. When his flaws led to failures, he used them as opportunities to learn. He never gave up or bowed to a royal order designed to keep him a “tenet farmer” forever.The British authorities reminded Washington of his status as a “colonial” and “provincial” at every opportunity. When his half-brother, Lawrence, told him to accept the way the world worked under the crown, the future president resolved instead to change the system.In our History Author Show interview on “Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father,” Peter Stark recalled that Washington “tried and tried and tried” to get a commission as a British officer. “He was turned down every time.”Washington “personally suffered a great deal of the consequences of being on the losing end of an aristocracy,” Mr. Stark said, “and not being recognized for his merit, for not existing in a meritocracy. I think that lesson stayed with him all his life and, very clearly, he had a good deal of bitterness about it.”‘George Washington, Surveyor,’ from a painting by Henry Hintermeister, 1948. Via Wikimedia CommonsMr. Stark described Washington as “thin skinned.” Appointed a colonial officer, he refused to accept a salary less than his British counterparts. More unbelievable, but just as true, is how many times his uniform and tricorn hat were shot through. Native Americans said that their best marksmen couldn’t hit him — a sign of the Great Spirit had a destiny in store.Determined to be a soldier, Washington accepted a doomed assignment to eject the French from British territory. Relying too much on what he’d read and ignoring advice, he built a fort in a flood plain. Forced to surrender after his strategy failed, he signed terms accepting blame for assassinating an officer because he was unable to read French.Stories like these have been lost and Washington’s life distilled down to slavery. Here, too, he improved himself. In his will, he bequeathed freedom to everyone at Mount Vernon upon the death of his wife, Martha, knowing that it might prompt someone to kill her. To avoid that fate, Martha granted emancipation soon after being widowed.Junius Brutus Stearns’s depiction of Major George Washington, on a white horse, in the Battle of the Monongahela during the French and Indian War, July 9, 1755. Via Wikimedia CommonsWashington, Mr. Stark said, didn’t have the “sense of security of ‘this is my place in the world’ the way I think many of us do. … I think that is one of the real motivators, one of the real dynamics that makes him push so hard, that makes him so ambitious. He wants to make his name in the world. He wants to have a place.”The young Washington wasn’t gifted the exalted spot in the American story that he achieved. He had to overcome hardship, failure, and heartbreak. Cynics swipe past his origin story at the speed of Wi-Fi. If Americans take the time to meet him, though, they’ll find an inspirational figure with much to teach us about reaching our greatest potential.

‘Young Washington’ Delivers a Hero’s Origin Story to a Nation Plagued by Cynicism

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