[4]

The generation which fought the Revolution, framed and adopted the
Constitution, and established the United States were impressed with
the most profound veneration, the most devoted affection, the most
absolute idolatry for the hero, sage, statesman. In the reaction
that came in the next generation against "the old soldiers," who
for thirty years had assumed all the honors and enjoyed all the
fruits of the victory that they had won, accelerated by the
division in American sentiment for or against the French
Revolution, it came to be felt, as the younger generation always
will feel, that the achievements of the veterans had been greatly
overrated and their demigod enormously exaggerated. They thought,
as English Harry did at Agincourt, that "Old men forget: yet all
shall be forgot, but they'll remember with advantages what feats
they did that day."

The fierce attacks of the Jeffersonian Democracy on Washington, his
principles, his life, and his habits, exercised a potent influence
in diminishing the general respect for his abilities felt by the
preceding generation; and Washington came to be regarded as a
worthy, honest, well-meaning gentleman, but with no capacity for
military and only mediocre ability in civil affairs. This estimate
continued from the beginning of Jefferson's administration to the
first of Grant's. Neither Marshall nor Irving did much during that
period to place him in a proper historical light....

But in the last twenty-five years there has been a steady drift
toward giving Washington his proper place in history and his
appropriate appreciation as soldier and statesman. The general who
never won a battle is now understood to have been the Revolution
itself, and one of the great generals of history. The statesman who
never made a motion, nor devised a measure, nor constructed a
proposition in the convention of which he was president, is
appreciated as the spirit, the energy, the force, the wisdom which
initiated, organized, and directed the formation of the
Constitution of the United States and the Union by, through, and
under it; and therefore it seems now possible to present him as the
Virginian soldier, gentleman, and planter, as a man, the evolution
of the society of which he formed a part, representative of his