Maurizio Valsania - First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity

First Among Men

GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MYTH OF AMERICAN MASCULINITY

Maurizio Valsania

Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore

2022 Maurizio Valsania

All rights reserved. Published 2022

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Valsania, Maurizio, 1965 author.

Title: First among men : George Washington and the myth of American masculinity / Maurizio Valsania.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021054973 | ISBN 9781421444475 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421444482 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Washington, George, 1732-1799Influence. | MasculinityUnited StatesHistory18th century. | PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. | United StatesSocial life and customs1775-1783.

Classification: LCC E312.17.V35 2022 | DDC 973.4/1092 [B] dc23/eng/20220413

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054973

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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To Serenella

Visit the eighteenth century, and you will return with your head spinning, for it is endlessly surprising, inexhaustibly interesting, irresistibly strange.

ROBERT DARNTON , George Washingtons False Teeth

I do not think vanity is a trait of my character.

GEORGE WASHINGTON TO DR. JAMES CRAIK , March 25, 1784

First Among Men

O n Christmas afternoon, 1776, Washington informed his ragtag army that they would embark that night on a secret mission. The soldiers were stationed near McConkeys Ferry, Pennsylvania, where they had retreated after a series of defeats, the British having countered early losses in Boston with resounding victories in New York. Many of the men were wounded and sick, their numbers decimated by defections and a wave of de-enlistments in advance of Christmas. Supplies were scarce and morale low, and confidence in ultimate victory was ebbing fast. Perhaps it was for these reasons more than any tactical objective that Washington decided to launch a bold and unexpected counterattack against the enemy.

The weather was harsh that winter, and the British had withdrawn to New York to wait out the season until the next campaign. Theyd left a troop of fifteen hundred Hessian soldiers across the Delaware to protect New Jersey. The Hessians had fought for the British in many colonial conflicts around the globe, and they were detested by the Americans for being paid mercenaries enforcing British rule. In preparation for the attack, Washington gathered reinforcements from other commanders, sufficient food supplies for a three-day foray, and a number of ferries and rowboats sturdy enough to transport his troops and heavy cannons. His plan was to cross the river in three waves and take the Hessian garrison by surprise.

After hours of delay, the men finally loaded up the boats and pushed off from shore around midnight. Washington himself led the first wave, riding in a wooden, flat-bottomed, double-ended watercraft known as a Durham boat because it was used by the nearby Durham Ironworks as a freighter. The wind and snow blew hard, and the river began to ice up, making the crossing even more treacherous. Though the sneak attack is heralded now as an illustration of dauntless courage and determination by brave revolutionaries, the sortie might have smacked of foolish desperation at the time. Many of the soldiers must have felt both daring and desperate as they made the crossing and prayed their boats would not capsize.

In one of the most famous paintings celebrating the Revolutionary War, Washington Crossing the Delaware, the general stands at the prow of one of those overladen rowboats, regal and stalwart, jaw lifted and eyes forward, eager to face all foes and meet the destiny before him. Though the wind tears at the American flag and chunks of ice batter the hull as the men strain at their oars, Washington himself is unaffected. He is an icon of the great nation struggling to be born. He is a hero without parallel. Washingtons mind is crisp, but his body is even better. He stands for the eternal masculine. He is first among men.

This portrayal of Washington has been etched into our consciousness and the national mythos of the United States. Of the Founding Fathers and other significant figures in American history, Washington has been at once mythologized and simplified to an extent that places him beyond reproach but also beyond context, enshrined and sanctified.

But rather than an emblem of the eternal masculine, Washington was a male of the eighteenth century. And he was a real human person: he felt pain and fear, suffered from physical hardships and illnesses, experienced love and cruel loss, was courageous but conscious of his own limits, was both violent and caring, hard and soft, and carefully crafted his own character and identity to project a highly refined public persona.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutze, 1851. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

The painting of Washington crossing the Delaware was made in 1851, almost seventy-five years after the events it depicted. The artist, Emanuel Leutze, was born in Germany in 1816. Of course, he had never met Washington. Accordingly, everything about the scene should be called into question. Its highly implausible, for example, that Washington stood in the bow of the boat as he was portrayed. It would have been foolish to do so, and the military operation would have been marred by any jolt to the boat that would plunge the general into the icy water. Whats more, the Durham boat Washington ferried in was longer than depicted. It seems pedantic but also necessary to point out that the sky at the time was not light but dark, and any posing Washington might have done would have gone completely unnoticed.

Like most art, the portrayal says more about the times and world in which the painter, not the subject, lived. In that sense, its a masterpiece of realism. Leutze captures Washington perfectly through the lens of nineteenth-century preferences, sensibilities, stereotypes, and practices of masculinity. Leutzes Washington is barrel-chested, strong, and muscular. He is straightforward and unapologetic in his determination. He is defiant, self-preening, almost boorish. In this, he is no longer an eighteenth-century southern aristocrat. Leutzes Washington typifies the mood of American nationalism at the time, in the long aftermath of the War of 1812.