INTERACTIVE
TIMELINE

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, American, 1816-1868; George Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851; Oil on Canvas;
12 2/5 x 21 1/4 in. (378.5 x 647.7 cm), Gift of John S. Kennedy, 1897 (97.34)

By the time George Washington was thrust into the role of American President in 1787, he was a man who needed no introduction., as the conditions of his popularity in the hearts and minds of the American population had long been in place. He had come from the ranks of the landed gentry in Virginia, as a surveyor-plantation owner, and had been to the near limits of the colonies on his way to becomming the first American super-hero.

Having blundered slightly as a colonel through the French and Indian War of the mid 1750’s, he was called into action in 1776 to lead the rag-tag colonial army against the seemingly unstoppable British war machine, who had already taken New York City from troops under Washington’s command. Partly due to British overconfidence, but more to Washington’s brilliant military tactics, he turned the tide of the war with a single win over the British in Trenton, New Jersey. Using near guerilla tactics, preminiscent of those used nearly two hundred years later by the Viet Cong against American troops, Washington crossed Delaware River at between Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey on a frigid Christmas night and caught the British unaware. One hundred years later this crossing was famously captured as myth by German American Artist Emanuel Leutze. To his troops, Washington had proved himself a champion of the Common Man, in spite of his own high position in society, wooden teeth and all (another myth: porcelain was used for dentures during that time). In short Washington was a leader of the people…and he rarely let them down.

George Washington, marble sculpture by Horatio Greenough, c. 1840; in the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

As the world’s first president, he was immortalized in a way normally reserved for kings, especially in Europe, as the American had had their fill of kings. America had nearly immediately assumed its own identity, based upon a derivative of a mix of Roman governmental structure and Platonian democracy, which America was determined to apply to its population…except slaves and women, also a reflection of a shortcoming of Grecian democracy. The Utopian Grecian ideal was also reflected in the “look” of the new republic. Having expended much of the timber in its most populated areas, urban building were constructed of red brick, as there was no shortage of clay and mud in the soil. These buildings were adorned discretely and cleanly with unadorned Greek-style fluted columns. The distinctive American style, upon which Washington, DC and many colonial East coast U.S. cities are built, is commonly referred to as Federalist, or more to the point of American ideals: Neo-Classical. The style, lasting in its heyday for over 100 years is of such elegant grace that one can easily see, when placed side by side, a design relationship to the early works of American architect Frank Llyod Wright, and the next major American Style.

In 1776, Pennsylvania Magazine editor Thomas Paine wrote his best selling pamphlet Common Sense describing a call to arms for independence, which parsed out to the common man the rationale behind American Declaration of Independence. Actually, the whole world was ready for this kind of thinking, but in the case of America, the timing and conditions were ripe.Already the philosophies from Thomases Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) to Paine (Common Sense. 1776,; The Rights of Man, 1791 ) had been advanced through the printed word to all those in a global population who were learning to read.