![]() ![]() He appealed for release as an American citizen, but French officials replied they considered him an Englishman. Thomas Paine spent 10 months in 1794 in a Paris prison, terrified that the French would execute him. “Will not the world be led to conclude that the mask of political hypocrisy has been alike worn by a CAESAR, a CROMWELL and a WASHINGTON?” George Washington, Chameleon Beckley published those numbers in Bache’s newspaper, seriously embarrassing the Washington administration. By March 31, 1795, six years into his presidency, he overdrew his pay by $6,154 - $117,000 in today’s dollars. But Washington liked to live large and withdrew from the Treasury more than Congress appropriated to him. Washington’s salary was $25,000 – about $475,000 in today’s dollars. Treasury records and used them against the first president. John Beckley, as clerk of the House of Representatives, had access to U.S. George Washington, Big SpenderĪnother critic of Washington’s aristocratic style did him some real damage during his presidency. He is but a man, and certainly not a great man. In his final salvo, Bache published a pamphlet arguing that Washington was merely “A Virginia planter by no means the most eminent, a militia-officer ignorant of war both in theory and useful practice, and a politician certainly not of the first magnitude.”īache derided him as a dull, uninspiring lover of pomp, and concluded, He relentlessly attacked George Washington as a corrupt monarchist. The treaty normalized relations with the British at the expense of the French revolutionaries.īache owned a newspaper, the Philadelphia General Advertiser and Aurora, which began trashing Washington over the Jay Treaty. Then in 1795, Washington supported the Jay Treaty with Britain. During the French Revolution, Bache believed the French revolutionaries fought for the same ideals the American revolutionaries did. George Washington sorely disappointed Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson. The Phyladelphians and New Yorkers who are local and partial enough to themselves are meek and modest in Comparison with Virginian Old Dominionisms Washington of course was extolled without bounds. They trumpet one another with the most pompous and mendacious Panegyricks. Not a Bearne in Scotland is more national, not a Lad upon the High Lands is more clannish, than every Virginian I have ever known. ![]() ![]() Benjamin Rush, that included a snarky description of Washington’s talents, including his Virigin1a birth. In 1807, Adams wrote a letter to his best friend, Dr. Adams, unlike Washington, ended his presidency in bitterness and controversy.Īdams still nursed a grudge against Washington seven years after he died. John Adams – short, pudgy, irascible – perhaps can be forgiven for resenting the adulation heaped on the tall and elegant George Washington. One thing did turn up: The British captured Lee, which took away Washington’s difficult rival and made it easier for him to command American forces. 13, 1776, Lee wrote to fellow general Horatio Gates,Įntre nous, a certain great man is most damnably deficient…unless something we do not expect turns up we are lost. John Adams called him a ‘queer creature’ and Abigail Adams recounted how he made her shake hands with his Pomeranian. Here are five criticisms of George Washington: George Washington, ‘damnably deficient’Ĭharles Lee, an eccentric Virginian with an excessive love of his dogs, resented George Washington for edging him out as commander in chief. In at least one case, George Washington received blame for something he didn’t do. Some, like Hancock, were jealous, while others had political differences. Washington’s detractors included his fellow generals as well as his political enemies. The famously vain Hancock apparently wanted Washington to understand that a governor of Massachusetts had more importance than the president of a republic. Massachusetts governor John Hancock, for example, snubbed George Washington when he visited Boston. He spent another eight as the first president of the United States. Rather than enjoy his vast wealth, George Washington chose to spend eight years fighting the American Revolution. He also made considerable sacrifices to shape the new nation. ![]()
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