In George Washington’s undelivered first draft of his first inaugural address, he answered the accusation that he was running for political office to enrich himself. “Divine Providence hath not seen fit,” he wrote, “that my blood should be transmitted or my name perpetuated by the endearing, though sometimes seducing channel of immediate offspring.” In explaining his motivation to run for political office, Washington cited his lack of biological children. As if to provide a substitute for fatherhood, divine providence saw fit to make Washington, instead, the father of his country.
His singular importance to the country’s formation needs little elaboration. Not only did he lead the military effort that vindicated the Declaration of Independence – whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year – but he also served as the moral center of the constitutional convention. All this to say, we do not call Washington the father of the country without reason.
Crucial to our purposes, Washington’s birthday on February 22nd nears. February 22nd saw informal Washington celebrations from the founding era through 1879, when it became a federally recognized holiday. It remained an official holiday until 1968, when Congress changed the holiday’s date to the third Monday of February, or what we now call President’s Day. As this year marks the country’s semiquincentennial, a heightened sense of reflection and patriotic feeling should lead us to commemorate Washington’s actual birthday. We can ask how concretely we ought to celebrate. Should it be a private or communal affair? What sentiments are fitting? Lightheartedness? Solemnity, perhaps?
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We can look to the example of previous Princetonians for inspiration. Between 1873 and 1909, Princeton students held an annual celebration on Washington’s birthday. Every February 22nd, they filed into the chapel (and later the gymnasium) to hear orations on Washington’s life. The orations’ titles alone are suggestive of their temper: “The Age of Sacrifice,” “Washington the Patriot,” “The Character and Influence of Washington,” to name a few.
These titles reveal speeches that sang the praises of patriotism and cultivated reverence for Washington. They were reflective and didactic, honoring the country’s founding through the life of its first president. Expressions of such sentiment presumably strengthened the students’ reverence for the nation’s origins.
But the gatherings were not entirely of this character. Though the earlier orations were framed in an air of solemnity, the ceremony’s final speech, delivered by a member of the graduating class, was conspicuously lighthearted. Its explicit purpose was to impart a comedic aspect to the ceremony. At the risk of reading unintended meaning into these humorous speeches, let us examine them more closely.
The speeches compared Washington to individual members of the senior class, with speakers drawing false equivalencies to poke fun at their classmates. One speaker mentioned that George Washington had an inventive turn of mind like his classmate Billy Stump, who “invented an improved chicken coop, but had to tear it down before he could get out.” Another asserted that just as “George never broke an engagement, neither did Billy Spicer. He accepts things in such a nice way – ‘I’ll come if I am able, if I am not able I will not come.’” This speaker wittily invokes Washington’s reliability to emphasize his classmate Billy’s indecision. To state the obvious, the humor of these comparisons lies in the fact that in no meaningful sense do these classmates equal Washington; their qualities should not be mentioned in the same breath as his, let alone compared as analogous.
Other comparisons shift the emphasis from character to physicality, measuring classmates against the first president’s frame: “Unlike Marbles, Washington attained the full stature of his manhood at the age of sixteen.” Marbles, it may well be imagined, was a late bloomer, perhaps not particularly tall (at least not compared to Washington, who stood an intimidating 6 feet, two inches tall and weighed over two hundred pounds). Here’s another: “Washington grew rapidly and at the age of four was as tall as Benny Everitt.”
The comparisons, taken together, invoke many different Washingtons: Washington the Inventor, Washington the Four-Year-Old, Washington the Wine-Drinker, Washington the Scientist, and so on. In spite of their irony, these comparisons do produce associations between the students and Washington. By attaching different properties — both real and fabricated — to Washington, the speakers turn him into a capacious figure, vast enough to see his reflection in many different kinds of students. It is difficult to relate to a man who lived so long ago, particularly one whose personality frequently seems more legendary than historical. Making Washington tangible, then, through perceiving him in the life of one’s classmate, has the wonderful consequence of collapsing long stretches of historical distance. Washington becomes immortal, inasmuch as he figuratively lives through the students. Knowing one’s classmates becomes, in a sense, a way to know the first president.
That said, many of the comparisons come across as disrespectful to the extent they reduce Washington to the standing of a university senior. In fact, many speeches involve overt irreverence. One speaker refers to Washington as the “daddy of the country.” Another speaker calls him “Georgie.” The distinct effect of these remarks is to diminish Washington’s stature, even infantilize him. These speeches thus change the conventional direction of reverence. One no longer owes Washington deference, instead treating him as the object of a paternal attitude. The American’s father becomes the American’s child. Does this mockery not undermine the event’s ceremonial purpose?
Yet one again should recognize that such jests, despite their irreverence, magnify the intimate feeling students felt toward Washington. Relating to Washington in the way a parent relates to his child implies all the closeness and love of parenthood. More than merely prompting laughter, treating Washington as a child involves a certain emotional disposition. These different familial relations draw him closer to the students’ hearts.
This levity, moreover, was surely a needed descent from the heights of praise. How impossible it must have seemed to live up to Washington’s stature! Humor might have proven a welcome catharsis after the previous orations’ edifying strains.
Finally, there is something else healthy reflected in the ironic diminutions of Washington. That students felt they could mock their nation’s founder betrays a culture not enslaved to its past, one that admires its founder without feeling essentially inferior to him. It is well if men can look at Washington as a source of inspiration without experiencing a sense of permanent inadequacy; such men still believe they have something left of their own to accomplish. Tocqueville once remarked that Americans lack not humility, but pride. What better way to instill confidence in man than to suggest that he resembles, or even exceeds, George Washington.
Invoking the mythological, deified Washington serves a purpose. It appropriately honors Washington’s great deeds and superhuman achievement. It endows legitimacy to the regime, which can consequently trace its origins to a glorious beginning. But Washington as the object of humor also serves a purpose. It reminds us that Washington is not different to us in kind. It follows that matching or surpassing his greatness is not impossible in principle, but in fact eminently possible.
In this way, the humorous speeches perceive Washington’s brilliance and reclaim it for the present. The spirit he embodied can be renewed and realized again. Whatever animated him does not lay in the dustbin of history but lies present (even if dormant) within the Princeton senior class. They are panegyrics not only to the immortal Washington, but to the classmates of the speakers.
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The lighthearted aspect of the celebration apparently went too far in certain years. It was a custom to throw cards during the celebration, and in 1900, the Daily Princetonian ran the following complaint: “How any committee of self-respecting college men could formulate and have printed such a conglomeration of vulgar and nauseous epithets as appeared on yesterday’s cards is beyond comprehension.” I have not discovered what exactly was written; perhaps a more adroit historian can figure it out. It is enough to know that it was something mischievous. Nor was this incident a one-off. In 1893, the sophomore class made “public a sheet which was to say the least very questionable in character […] and was an inexcusable abuse of a privilege which has been exercised heretofore without offending the sense of propriety of those in attendance.”
It was perhaps in response to such behavior that the celebrations “evolved into an ‘almost painfully solemn’ occasion.” In turn, students lost interest and the ceremony decreased in popularity. The final ceremony took place in 1909. There has not been a celebration since.
It may be the case that birthday celebrations for George Washington will not return to Princeton. However, duly note that the celebrations had not been continually ongoing since the founding era. They started in 1884, nearly nine decades after Washington’s death. Before 1884, the last instance of a formal Princeton Washington celebration took place in 1796. There was then a long several decades hiatus before celebrations resumed. This piece of information proves relevant to those who believe what happened over a century ago has no bearing on what happens today; to those who believe the days of Washington celebrations are forever behind us. For the continued absence of such birthday celebrations is not a foregone conclusion. Just as before, they may come to this university again, perhaps in a new and modified form.
Next week, we will not gather to hear high flights of oratory as celebrations of Washington’s birthday once occasioned. Nevertheless, the day may still lead us to contemplate Washington’s life, significance, and paternal relation to the country. As former Princetonians have shown, the spirit of this reflection need not be chauvinistic or mournful, disingenuous or nostalgic; rather, it can–and should–be a profound expression of joy.
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