Maintain a proper image to the world
John Adams, in a bit of a fit of temper, once referred to Washington as Old Muttonhead. Adams had the unenviable task of succeeding Washington as President so his harrumphing can be viewed with some sympathy. His wife provided a somewhat more laudable description. Abigail Adams described thus: “He has a dignity which forbids familiarity mixed with an easy affability which creates love and reverence.” This is almost a reflection of Rule 87. “Let thy carriage be such as becomes a man Grave Settled and attentive to that which is spoken. Contradict not at every turn what others Say.”
What is often forgotten about George Washington is that he was a woodsman of renown in Colonial Virginia, a surveyor who was one of the first to explore the lands across the Ohio River. His education and training was in woodcraft, and he personally knew many of the premier woodsmen of the day, including Daniel Morgan, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark. Washington was acutely aware of this lack of formal education and the difference between walking in the western woods and walking in society. He was constantly aware of his bearing and the way he carried himself.
It took only a few weeks of his Presidency before his administration was under attack for what some perceived to be the Royal trappings which were displayed in the President’s House in New York. Among these were the levees which were held weekly and at which Washington appeared in a black suit made of imported velvet, bowing in return to those who bowed and curtsied to him (Jefferson would dispense with the bows and introduce the handshake during his administration). Even the manner in which Washington bowed was criticized as stiff and Royalist. He responded that it was old age and an unskilled teacher which led him to bow in that manner.
“Be not tedious in Discourse, make not many digressions nor repeat often the Same manner of discourse,” reads Rule 88. Washington found the formal levees to be tedious in the extreme and since they were held weekly during the early months of the Presidency – Tuesday afternoons – there was inevitably repeated discourse. Such affairs are often the source of gossip, which Washington was not above hearing, though he did not repeat it, at least there is no indication that he did. Rule 89 mandates, “Speak not Evil of the absent for it is unjust.” It proscribes speaking evil, but not listening to it.
Washington’s Presidency was set against the backdrop of the French Revolutionary Wars and two factions emerged in the United States, one backing war against France and the other supporting a war against Great Britain. Those who wanted to fight the British wanted to punish them for supporting the American Indian tribes in the Northwest Territory and Canada. Washington wanted to avoid any war and give the country a growth period of relative peace and in this he was successful, though it cost him a great deal of his popularity.