George Washington—the Mightiest Name on Earth?

Don’t believe us when we suggest that George Washington was and is the mightiest name on Earth—or at least the mightiest human being.

On February 22, 1842, on the 110th anniversary of the birth of America’s first president, a 33-year-old Illinois lawyer and legislator was invited to speak about Washington at his state capital. Abraham Lincoln, always precise with his words, chose the moment to give what may be one of the greatest tributes to what many historians consider America’s indispensable man.

We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of Earth—long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name, a eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.

Washington’s feats are too numerous to mention, including building and molding the Continental Army into a force that would defeat the world’s greatest empire and secure our independence. From his miraculous escape across the East River to Manhattan, to his long-shot gamble crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776, and to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, he was the “Old Fox” whom the British could never “bag.”

“He had a grand strategic sense, and that sense was that this is a big country and the British are going to have a hard time subduing it,” said Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College.

Washington sacrificed much in service to his country. “He lived with the troops and away from his home for close to nine years and missed home and wrote letters about it,” Arnn continued. “But he suffered with the troops, and sometimes his wife, Martha, would come and suffer with the troops, as she did at Valley Forge.

“Washington kept things together and kept the army together and made it hard for the British to win because they really had to conquer the land,” he said.

But other great men have led armies to victory. What America’s first conquering hero did next sealed Washington’s legacy as the mightiest name on Earth. “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action,” Washington told members of Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, on December 23, 1783. “And bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all my employments of public life.”

When told by the American artist Benjamin West that Washington was about to walk away from all of the power and prestige befitting a conquering general, King George III of England famously said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

“He could have been anything he wanted—czar, king, potentate,” the late historian David McCullough said about Washington surrendering his commission. “This was the ultimate ideal of Cincinnatus, the conquering hero returning to the plow.”

Americans take it for granted that our nation’s military serves with our consent and not the other way around. “For George Washington, civilian control of the military was a core part of his belief,” Mount Vernon says on its website. “His resignation signaled to the world and the American people that this new nation would be founded on different principles.”

Washington, the man who chose not to be a king, returned home to Mount Vernon to pursue civilian life. But he wasn’t finished serving his country, not by a long shot. Duty called again, summoning Washington to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, where he served as president of the Constitutional Convention. His guiding hand and presence are credited as being the weight that assured the Constitution’s eventual passage, giving birth to our republic.

But there’s even more to add to Washington’s prodigious legacy. He was then unanimously called upon to be our first president and understood deeply that his leadership would provide an example of how the new nation could be governed and grow. For example, he signed into law the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, affirming the prior ordinance of 1787, that established the governance of the territory northwest of the Ohio River. This ordinance, among other things, precluded slavery in these new territories of the United States.

President Washington could have run for a third term—the restriction to two terms came in 1947 with the adoption of the 22nd Amendment not long after Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office during his fourth term. But he chose once again to do the unthinkable and walked away from power for a second time.

Though Lincoln believed it was impossible to properly eulogize Washington, many tried after his death on December 14, 1799. “To us, he has been the sympathizing friend and tender father,” the Reverend Richard Allen, the co-founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a former slave, said in his eulogy in Philadelphia. “He has watched over us, and viewed our degraded and afflicted state with compassion and pity—his heart was not insensible to our sufferings.”

Of all the things written after Washington’s death, none topped the words of John Adams, who served as Washington’s vice president for two terms before becoming our nation’s second president:

The life of our Washington can not suffer by comparison with those of other countries who have been most celebrated and exalted by fame… 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.

This is why Washington’s life story is worth remembering—and revering—as we approach the day of his birth. “This isn’t ancestor worship, this is reality, this is the truth,” McCullough said not long before his death. “To be indifferent to people like Washington is a form of ingratitude. We ought to be down on our knees thanking God that we’re a part of this country, and we ought to know about the people who made it possible.”

Arguably, in all of history, no single man was more responsible for making America possible. In every way imaginable way, Washington was indeed America’s indispensable man. His name deserves to remain, as Lincoln said, the mightiest on Earth. And not for the power he possessed, which was considerable, but for the power he willingly relinquished.