Happy birthday to George Washington

[Terabith]

Happy birthday to George Washington!  (This is a repeat from last year.)

 

You have been learning about George Washington since you were in kindergarten, and you probably think you know all about him. Founding Father, first president, chopped down a cherry tree and told the truth, general, dog lover, wearer of wooden teeth. Blah blah blah. (Actually, his teeth weren’t made of wood, but from the teeth of animals and slaves.) But what you probably don’t know about him is that George Washington was secretly a wizard.

 

“A WIZARD?” you’re probably thinking.

 

Well, yes. That’s really the only explanation for the story of his life.

 

First of all, he was invincible. Like, he really couldn’t be killed in battle. How do we know this? Because if he could have been killed in battle, he totally should have been.

 

Way back in 1755, during the French and Indian War, George Washington served as an aide-de-camp under General Edward Braddock. “Aide-de-camp” is a fancy way of saying that he was basically an intern. The future Founding Father’s job was to help out the highest-ranking officer and do things for him, like his laundry or carrying things. Maybe a little secretarial work. George Washington volunteered for the job because he knew the area. It was a pretty minor position, so it was a little surprising when instead of getting tea for the general and writing letters, George Washington decided to take over the British Army and announce his invincibility to the world.

 

During one battle, a botched surprise attack, the British were losing. Badly. After hours of intense fighting, General Braddock was shot off his horse. The British were surrounded and couldn’t get organized. So Washington, the glorified intern, started issuing orders and riding back and forth between the troops and the officers. Remember, he had no rank or position, but he was issuing orders anyway. If that wasn’t bad enough, then his horse got shot out from underneath him.

 

Twice.

 

Again, remember, George Washington was just a guy who knew the area. He was a volunteer. He wasn’t even a member of the Army. After his general was incapacitated, he said, “Wow! Looks like a position just opened up! Shotgun!” Then in battle, after his horse was shot out from underneath him, he just grabbed another, like it was no big thing. Then when it happened again, he just grabbed another horse. Instead of realizing that God wanted him to walk, he thought, “Wow. Bad day for horses,” and grabbed another victim.

 

Because of his efforts, the British troops were able to form a rear guard and allowed a safe retreat. At the end of the battle, Washington had four bullets in his coat and none in his body. He also happened to be the only officer who wasn't shot down. Years later, an Indian chief traveled to meet Washington. He recounted the battle, "Our rifles were leveled, rifles which, but for you, knew not how to miss ... I am come to pay homage to the man ... who can never die in battle." Let's be clear: I firmly believe that if a Native American says that someone is magic, that person is magic. Not up for discussion.

 

He admitted in a letter to his brother to liking the sound of bullets. “I heard the bullets whistling, and believe me, there is something charming in the sound of bullets,” he wrote in a letter to his brother. When King George heard about that, he suggested that perhaps Washington needed to hear a few more. Not that it would have mattered. The bullets were too scared of Washington to come anywhere’s near him.

 

Washington's bulletproof status didn't disappear when it was time for the Revolutionary War, either. During the battle of Princeton in 1777, Washington charged into a fight where an American regiment had already b een defeated. Washington arrived to a battle the British were completely destroying and to American men fleeing from all angles, which must have been confusing to Washington, who never understood why people were afraid of bullets. Things were falling apart on an impossible scale, which is of course when Washington shines his brightest. Washington rode over to the fleeing men and yelled, "Parade with us, my brave fellows! There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly." The men couldn't look George Washington in his radiating, God-imbued face and keep running; they were only mortal.

 

Getting his troops into formation, Washington rode in front of them and ordered them not to fire until he gave the word. Washington rode until he was just thirty yards away from the British, and then standing in the middle of two armies, he gave the order to fire.

 

Let's pause the story. George Washington, the commander in chief of a fledgling nation, a symbol for the would-be country, stood, not only in front of his own men with guns telling them to shoot, but also between his men and the British troops who were only 30 yards away. His courage was only outweighed by his stupidity. Yes, his men needed to see a strong leader in order to keep united, but you know what they also needed? Their leader to not be killed by taking 500 bullets to the face. If you don't remember, the British troops had a tendency to stand in a line; it's a big part of why a lot of historians think the Americans were able to win the war. In this instance, however, it means that George Washington was a single man on a horse standing in front of a Wall of Death. A Wall of Death that was mostly aiming for him.

 

So many shots were fired that it was written, "The smoke was so thick that it was virtually impossible to see. The entire scene was chaos." The smoke cleared and George was not lying dead on the ground as he should have been, but instead "sat upright on his horse, calm and resolute."

Colonel Fitzgerald, Washington's aide, burst into tears upon seeing the commander alive. Riding over to his friend, Washington said, "The day is our own." So to be clear, not only did Washington not seem to understand the almost certain death he had just beaten, but he had the temerity to assert that they would win the ensuing battle, a claim that he had no grounds to believe were true. Except they totally won.

 

Actually, George Washington’s bulletproof status started even before he was born. Mary Ball Washington, mother of the future father of the USA, was enjoying a dinner party and sitting next to the fireplace. Suddenly, a ball of lightning exploded down the chimney, zapping a girl sitting right next to her with enough gigawatts to fuse her fork and knife together and kill her to death.

 

Mary got badly jolted, but not enough to scramble the infant Founding Father currently floating around in her uterus. The party was understandably ruined.

 

If she'd been sitting a little closer, if her chair had been a little better at conducting electricity, if any one of a million variables played out the other way... no USA.

 

Since we're all from the future, we know that Washington is an obvious choice for president and commander in chief and whatever else he wants to be. The American people needed to elect Washington, because God built him out of magic and testosterone, and that sort of thing should be rewarded.

 

Of course it wasn't so obvious back then, and in fact, Washington should not have been elected to be the leader of anything, let alone an entire army. Braddock's defeat was just one of Washington's many, many defeats. Fort Necessity, for example, which Washington set up and then almost immediately had to surrender after a brief battle. That does not make for a shining military history.

 

There were much older, more experienced men to choose from, but why did Washington get called up to the big leagues? Did he give a passionate speech? Did he have the best guns? Did he captivate a nation?

 

No. It came down to geography. Just like today, an important position was filled based on demographics. Namely, Washington was from the correct state. Virginian support was key to winning the war, and hey, Washington's from Virginia, so, sure, let's make him commander in chief. Without that appointment, Washington would never have become president. That just goes to show you, kids -- if you work hard and try your best and are literally born in the right place at the right time through no agency of your own whatsoever, you too can grow up to be president.

 

Well, and there was also the fact that he could see the future. On his way to the Continental Congress, when most of the other delegates were still trying to figure out how to prevent war with England, George Washington stopped off on the way there to buy some tomahawks, some books about military strategies, and some new holsters for his guns, before arriving in his military uniform. While most people were still trying to figure out how to prevent war, he knew that it was inevitable and that he was going to be running it. But he was right. And furthermore, as commander in chief, his plans worked, even when they were terrible. Because he could control the weather. Because he was a wizard.

 

It's the early winter of 1775, and George Washington is now General George Washington and fighting against the mother country. The Continental Army has the British-occupied Boston surrounded, but the two armies are in a stalemate, because Washington's men simply don't have enough firepower to force the British out. A man named Henry Knox shows up saying, "Hey, I've got an idea," and Washington says, "Sounds good." Knox replies, "Wait, I should clarify: It's completely crazy." "In that case," Washington says, "sounds even better!”

 

The mission was simple, in that a simpleton came up with it. Henry Knox wanted to go to Fort Ticonderoga, which was not a company that made pencils in those days, but was actually a fort that had been recently captured from the British. Once they got there, Knox proposed that the Continental Army acquire all the weaponry that was in it, and then bring it to Dorchester Heights to dislodge those stubborn British. The fort was 300 miles away, the plan required a ton of men and money, cannons had to be dismantled, flotillas had to be bought or made to ship everything down a river, stuff had to be moved onto sleds and hauled by enough oxen to handle the combined weight of the cannons and the sleds, and everything depended on the weather being crazy fickle in their favor -- they needed warmth to keep the river unfrozen on their way there and then snow at the precisely right time for covering ground with the sleds, and George Washington was strongly advised not to authorize the mission. Because it was impossible.

 

Well, Washington doesn't know the meaning of "impossible" or "too risky" or "stupid" or "You've been given direct orders not to do this.” So he gave Knox the go-ahead.

 

Knox ventured out and was able to get to the fort in Ticonderoga within four days, and he immediately began the work of disassembling the artillery. By the ninth day, everything was packed up on the flotillas and heading downriver. The men were rowing against freezing winds, and they only just managed to get the cannons across the lake when it started to freeze over. Within a week, Knox was able to obtain around 40 sleds able to carry the 5,400-pound loads, along with the oxen to pull them. Like clockwork, it started snowing, right when the men needed it to. It seemed like another stroke of that George Washington luck was in play.

 

It didn't make any sense. When Washington needed the river not to be frozen, it wouldn't be, and when he needed it to snow so the men could transport the weaponry via sled, it snowed. If this doesn't convince you that God's in some kind of weird heavenly gambling tournament and put a whole lot of money on George Washington's success, then we don't know what will.

 

Washington's weather-related luck actually came up a lot. In August of 1776, America had declared itself a nation, and the first major battle of the Revolutionary War was underway. George Washington didn't have nearly as many men as the British, and that's before you take into account how many were ill or unprepared. Washington set up shop at a Manhattan harbor and waited for the British there, knowing that the harbor would be important. When the British did arrive, Washington got his butt handed to him, as he was wont to do, because really, he was a terrible general.

And then British Army Commander in Chief William Howe decided to stop attacking Washington's troops, even though they were basically stranded and Howe had a giant ship with lots of firepower. For no reason. Just because George Washington was 70 percent leprechaun and willed Howe to stop.

 

Washington, meanwhile, fed spies bad information to make the British believe that he was asking for reinforcements, when really he sent for every ship and boat in the area to enable the entire army to retreat. Obviously all of the boats coming would most likely clue Howe in to some general happenings, but this is George Washington we're talking about, so he saw no flaw in the plan.

 

Because Washington was destined to win the war and be president, the weather took an unseasonable turn for the worse in New York on Aug. 29, and for the Continental Army, this seemed like another element to add to a long list of grievances, being that they were trapped, outnumbered, ill-equipped, poorly trained, freezing and starving, and it was raining. It seemed as if God was punishing the Americans with the same weather that usually makes everyone hate England in the first place.

 

But this rain turned out to be one of the best-disguised blessings in history, as it was so foggy the next morning that one could "scarcely discern a man from six yards' distance," which meant the Brits had to sit on their thumbs until the fog passed. What was more, for some reason, the fog "concealed from the British the operations of the Americans, while at New York the atmosphere was perfectly clear." In other words, the only parts of the city that were foggy were the parts the Brits needed to see through to figure out what the heck Washington was up to.

 

Washington did not need to shoot the British the next morning; he just needed to get out of Brooklyn with enough of his army to continue and win the war with. This fog provided him with precisely the time and the cover he needed to successfully sneak all 9,000 of his men into Manhattan while the British sat back and reminisced about this jolly good London weather. It was like Washington shouted, "Cover me!" at God, and God had complied like world's greatest buddy cop. There was not a single loss of life, and Washington was the last one to leave Long Island ... immediately after he snatched his whole army and the Revolution straight out of the British Empire's back pocket. By the time the fog lifted and Howe saw the Continental Army sailing away, waving at him, it was too late for the British Army to catch them.

 

Washington's crossing of the Delaware and subsequent Christmas conquering of the Hessian enemies is famous by now, but what a lot of people might not know is just how backwardsly Washington stumbled into victory.

 

Washington's plan, of course, was to sail across the Delaware on December 24 and attack on Christmas. When Washington's men sailed out, a British sympathizer saw the men and sent a servant to deliver a warning message. The note actually got to Colonel Johann Rall, the leader of the Hessian men, who promptly put the note in his pocket instead of reading it and continued playing cards and drinking. We haven't been in a lot of wars, but we're pretty sure that "reading urgent notes regarding the whereabouts of your enemies" is probably one of the first things they teach you to know (assuming you needed to even be taught that). Maybe Rall skipped that day of army training, or maybe the part of his brain that deals with reason is made of poop, or maybe George Washington is just cosmically, unfairly, inexplicably lucky. Whatever the reason, Rall never read the note. Well, not never.

 

He eventually read it the next day. After he’d been forced to surrender.

[AmandaVT]

I just read this to DH - he loved it. These are always some of my favorite posts - thank you for writing them!!

[Drama Llama]

You've given us a whole year of awesomeness!  Thank you!

[Corraleno]

I get so excited every time I see one of your awesome presidential posts pop up! 

[KSera]

Every time I read one of these, I become more fixated on wondering what your process is for writing them than I am on the content (the content is most excellent, my brain just works that way to get distracted by questions like that). So, how do you go about this? Are these all original writing? How long does it take to research and then to write? Inquiring minds want to know  🧐 .