Washington

“Concatenation of Causes”

How often do all the circumstances align themselves in such a manner that one man is able to achieve his maximum potential and give birth to nation unlike no other in it’s time? Had George Washington been born a century earlier or later, this combination of circumstances surely would have rendered him a more ordinary person. Was it divine providence, sheer luck, or acombination of both that allowed Washington to become the monumental figure he became? The man rode into battle countless times while musket balls pierced his coat and while men around him fell and never received more than a scratch. Men where heard to say that Washington appeared to have an invisible shield about him which nothing could pass. Circumstances as such, Washington rose to be oneof the most influential founding fathers of our country and contributed more than any man or woman in its history. To these contributions, neither as a historian nor even as an amateur history buff, I can only speak to those most obvious and I think those most monumental.
Washington’s greatest achievement and thus contribution was his ability to persevere through 8 years of war, many lostbattles, and conspiratress talk against him. Having achieved these allowed him to be the victor winning American Independence through the destruction of the mighty British Empire. In short Washington won the war of wars without witch our country would not exist, as we know it. This was no easy feat for several reasons. First and foremost the British commanded the most powerful Army and Navy the worldhad ever seen with seemingly unlimited funds to finance its war. In stark contrast to this would be the fledging American colonies with a weak Government with almost no ability to produce funding for the war paired with an army of undisciplined soldiers. The ineffectuality of the Continental Congress was in large part due to a deep underlying aversion to Governmental power. According to Ellisthe act of instituting emergency powers in the Continental Congress to create the Continental army closely resembled the monarchial powers of the British and ran against the grain of the revolution, which provoked criticism of the. A critical decision Washington made was his proactive treatment of small pox outbreaks among his army. Washington quickly enforced inoculation of his army to reducethe virulent outbreaks from taking out large portions of his army. In a letter Washington wrote to Nathanial Greene he claimed that any historian trying to write the history of the war would have trouble analyzing how exactly the Continental Army was able to beat the British.
This “concatenation of causes” surely helped Washington to win the war but Washington points to one other very importantreason the Continental army was able to succeed. That was unification of the country. The war began as a war for independence for 13 loosely connected governments and changed into one nation untied against tyranny. This is another of Washington’s contributions to this country. Washington was the embodiment of what the Colonies were fighting for and throughout the war became the centralfigure that helped to unite a collection of diverse colonies into a single entity becoming known as America. Washington was a man all could accept and all could love, creating unity, in a time when it was most needed, rather than dissention and factions amongst the colonies. This is something that Ellis writes was not understood at the onset of the war but evolved as the war progressed. “It was notjust a war for independence but also for nationhood.” (Ellis) This contribution, though less measurable than Washington’s defeat of the British, is no less important as this unity is what kept his army together in the face of the harshest conditions and treatment by the very Government it was fighting for. The winter at Valley Forge can only be seen as the most pitiful and disgraceful...