Читать реферат по английскому: "George Washington Essay Research Paper Washington George" Страница 3

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Second Administration The outbreak of war between revolutionary France and a coalition led by Britain, Prussia, and Austria in 1793 jeopardized American foreign policy and crippled Jefferson’s rival foreign policy design. When the French envoy, Edmond Genet, arrived in Charleston in April 1793 and began recruiting American privateers—and promising aid to land speculators who wanted French assistance in expelling Spain from the Gulf Coast—Washington insisted, over Jefferson’s reservations, that the U.S. denounce Genet and remain neutral in the war between France and Britain. Washington’s anti-French leanings, coupled with the aggressive attitude of the new regime in France toward the U.S., thus served to bring about the triumph of Hamilton’s pro-British foreign policy—formalized by Jay’s Treaty of 1795, which settled outstanding American differences with Britain.

The treaty—which many Americans felt contained too many concessions to the British—touched off a storm of controversy. The Senate ratified it, but opponents in the House of Representatives tried to block appropriations to establish the arbitration machinery. In a rare display of political pugnacity, Washington challenged the propriety of the House tampering with treaty making. His belligerence on this occasion cost him his prized reputation as a leader above party, but it was also decisive in securing a 51-48 vote by the House to implement the treaty. Conscious of the value of his formative role in shaping the presidency and certainly stung by the invective hurled at advocates of the Jay Treaty, Washington carefully prepared a farewell address to mark the end of his presidency, calling on the U.S. to avoid both entangling alliances and party rancor.

After leaving office in 1797, Washington retired to Mount Vernon, where he died on December 14, 1799.

Evaluation Washington’s place in the American mind is a fascinating chapter in the intellectual life of the nation. Washington provided his contemporaries with concrete evidence of the value of the citizen soldier, the enlightened gentleman farmer, and the realistic nationalist in stabilizing the culture and politics of the young republic. Shortly after the president’s death, an Episcopal clergyman, Mason Locke Weems, wrote a fanciful life of Washington for children, stressing the great man’s honesty, piety, hard work, patriotism, and wisdom. This book, which went through many editions, popularized the story that Washington as a boy had refused to lie in order to avoid punishment for cutting down his father’s cherry tree. Washington long served as a symbol of American identity along with the flag, the Constitution, and the Fourth of July. The age of debunking biographies of American personages in the 1920s included a multivolume denigration of Washington by American author Rupert Hughes, which helped to distort Americans’ understanding of their national origins. Both the hero worship and the debunking miss the essential point that his leadership abilities and his personal principles were exactly the ones that met the needs of his own generation. As later historians have examined closely the ideas of the Founding Fathers and the nature of warfare in the Revolution, they have come to the conclusion that Washington’s specific contributions to the new nation were, if anything, somewhat underestimated by earlier scholarship.

Похожие работы