George Washington, Prudent Revolutionary
First presented to the Philadelphia Society on March 22, 2025
In recent years some scholars on the Right have begun to emulate those historians of the Left who reject that American Founding as the best source for America’s core principles on liberty and order. Post-Liberal conservatives, for example, argue that the Founders attempted to build a new political system based on a radically individualist ideology closely related to the Enlightenment principles of the French Revolution. The American Revolution, they say, was a fatally flawed ideological project. In response, they promote a muscular, illiberal, and interventionist U.S. government to reach what they claim are conservative ends.
Critics Left and Right might see different errors in the American Founding but they thus offer a similar solution: take over the managerial state and use it to promote what they value and to punish what they reject. To achieve their statist goals, both know they must undermine the Founding, either by pushing it back a century and half, like the 1619 Project, or by diminishing its accomplishment in ordered liberty as hopelessly rotten even in 1776 and 1787.
Understanding George Washington’s role in the long American Revolution can go a long way toward inoculating us against such anti-Founding sentiment, allowing us to see the American Founding with fresh eyes in order to realize what we ought to preserve from our Revolutionary past as well as the best means for preserving it. One cannot find a more prudent and temperate revolutionary, or a less ideological leader devoted to limited, constitutional government, than George Washington.
The Long American Revolution
It is important to avoid equating the American Revolution solely with the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The long revolution includes the tax protests of the 1760s and early 1770s, as well as post-war efforts at establishing a stable constitutional government. This means we mark the end of the American Revolution not with Yorktown in 1781, nor with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, nor even with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, but with the presidency of George Washington.
George Washington’s Revolutionary Vision
Washington was a strong constitutionalist and a proponent of the rule of law. Unlike firebrands like Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry, Washington was not predisposed to radical words or deeds. How, then, did this man of order become a revolutionary and ultimately the General-in-Chief of the Continental Army?
The proximate cause of Washington’s road to revolution began with the Stamp Act of 1765, which he called "an unconstitutional method of taxation" and a "direful attack" upon American liberties. Though sympathetic to the principle of "no taxation without representation," Washington opposed the rioting led by Samuel Adams against the Stamp Act.
With the Townshend Duties of 1767, Washington saw the path to a constitutional resolution narrowing. By 1769, he became more vocal about British oppression of American liberties. He wrote to George Mason:
At a time when our lordly Masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to maintain the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors.Washington stressed that “the manner of doing it to answer the purpose effectually is the point in question.” In other words, in the application of principles, method matters. The ends do not justify the means. Moreover, we ought to take into account the practical effect of our actions, and this will often mean restraining our passions.
Washington was not yet ready in 1769 to take up arms over the unconstitutional taxes of the 1760s. John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson both argued these taxes violated not only common law but also natural rights. Washington agreed but nevertheless remained temperate in his response. “Arms,” he said, “should be the last resource." As an alternative, he supported boycotts as a peaceful means of protest.
After several years of the boycott came the Tea Act of 1773, which reduced the duty on tea by 300%. The clear implication of the Act was that Americans were unprincipled in their opposition to the Townshend Duties. Given the chance to buy East India Tea Company tea at lower prices than smuggled tea, Parliament expected Americans to opt for pocketbook over principle.
This presumption of vice, reducing as it did American constitutional and moral arguments to a dishonorable love of money, enraged Americans. The response in Boston was the Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when Sam Adams and his men this time dumped East India Tea Company tea into the harbor.
John Adams, whom Russell Kirk called a great American conservative, praised the event. John Dickinson, however, who had first stirred Americans to action with the phrase “No taxation without representation,” condemned it as in imprudent and immoderate act.
Washington sided with Dickinson. He supported the Bostonian cause but opposed the destruction of property. Riots and lawlessness, he believed, were not the politics of prudence.
After Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, Washington lamented that despite American efforts at resolution, Britain had only grown more "oppressive and arbitrary." He called the Coercive Acts "not only repugnant to natural Right, but Subversive of the Laws & Constitution of Great Britain itself."
Yet even in 1774, Washington hesitated to call for armed conflict. As he wrote to Bryan Fairfax:
The Crisis is arrived when we must assert our Rights, or Submit to every Imposition that can be heap’d upon us; till custom and use, will make us as tame, & abject Slaves.At the First Continental Congress, Washington still hoped for a constitutional solution, saying that “it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that peace and tranquility, upon constitutional grounds, may be restored and the horrors of civil discord prevented.”
The outbreak of violence at Lexington and Concord, however, soon left Americans with a stark choice. Washington recognized the moral gravity of the moment. "Unhappy it is to reflect, that a Brother’s Sword has been sheathed in a Brother’s breast… Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?"
Thus, he took up the mantle of revolution, becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
Law and Order: The Necessary Precursors to Liberty
Eight years later, and seemingly against all odds, the Americans were victorious. In a theatric display of civilian authority over military authority, Washington voluntarily resigned his commission. By 1786, however, he grew alarmed by threats to law and order, especially Shays’s Rebellion. He found it hard to believe Americans would rebel against their own government.
As he told his fellow veteran (and soon to be his Secretary of War), Henry Knox, "If three years ago any person had told me that at this day I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws and constitutions of our own making as now appears, I should have thought him a bedlamite—a fit subject for a mad house."
During Washington's second term as president, there was a similar rebellion, this time in western Pennsylvania on account of the Whiskey Tax. Washington’s proclamation to the so-called Whiskey Rebels emphasized his “obedience to that high and irresistible duty consigned to me by the Constitution ‘to take care that the laws be faithfully executed’.” Washington said he deplored above all “that the American name should be sullied by the outrages of Citizens on their own Government."
While Americans had considered Parliament foreign to their colonies, each of which had its own legislature, Americans now had representation in a national legislature of their own. President Washington recognized that the Whiskey incident was not “taxation without representation.” But he also knew that old habits die hard, and this includes violent protests against taxation. Thus, after suppressing the rebellion, Washington pardoned those convicted of treason, balancing justice with mercy.
Politics of Prudence
Even in Revolution, Washington knew, in the words of Russell Kirk, that “The American order . . . was not founded upon ideology. It was not manufactured; rather, it grew.” His legacy points not just to what is worth conserving in the American Revolution but also the best way to go about it. The politics of prudence, limited constitutional government, and the rule of law are the best guarantors for an ordered liberty.
