When George Washington stepped aside as president at the end of his second term, he knew the importance of his action. Perhaps, he told a friend, the Constitution would need an amendment to prohibit presidents from taking third terms. Yet, he thought his personal precedent might suffice to protect the republic from the risks of excessive ambition.
And for 143 years, it did - until Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Second World War to justify a third term, then a fourth. After he died in office, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to limit presidents to two terms.
When Washington died in 1799, he bequeathed three extraordinary precedents. He had declined a crown. He had declined office for life. And he had declined aristocratic titles (although people, for a time, did call him "Excellency").
The Constitution was a glorious thing - in part, because Washington epitomized the spirit of it. Without the restraint of America's first president and commander-in-chief, the Constitution could have been, as many constitutions are, mere pieces of paper. It's interesting to note that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cited Roosevelt's example last year when he was asked whether he would return for another term (or terms) as president.
Though the U.S. inherited the great injustice of slavery from its colonial past, it became a beacon of freedom and liberty for a widely enslaved world. By 2010, the World Forum on Democracy could document 120 functioning democracies (with 58 per cent of the world's population - more than 3.5 billion people), with many more evidently still to come.
In Our Country (1877), U.S. historian Benson Lossing celebrated Washington's death as well as his life. For Lossing, Washington's final moments were instructive. "In the closing month of the 18th century the inhabitants of the young republic were bereaved by the death of Washington. At his grave the hoarser croakings [of Washington's critics]were silenced, and were never heard afterward. …
"On the 13th of December, 1799, Washington was exposed to a storm of sleet, and took cold. At three o'clock in the morning of the 14th he awoke and found himself the victim of a severe attack of membranous croup [diphtheria] At daybreak, himself and Mrs. Washington being alarmed, the family physician, Dr. Craik, was sent for. … All that medical skill and affectionate devotion could do to relieve the sufferer was done but without effect. …
"At about 10 o'clock [in the evening]he attempted to speak to Mr. Lear [his secretary] but failed several times. At length he audibly murmured: 'I am just going. Have me decently buried.' … Washington whispered: 'Do you understand?' Mr. Lear replied, 'Yes.'
" 'Tis well,' said the dying Patriot; and these were the last words that he spoke - 'Tis well!' …
" 'Mrs. Washington, who was sitting at the foot of the bed [Mr. Lear later wrote] asked with a firm and collected voice, 'Is he gone?' I could not speak … 'Tis well,' she said … 'all's now over; I shall soon follow him.' "
Congress quickly decreed that a monument - a 555-foot obelisk of white marble - be constructed at the site of the new national capital on the banks of the Potomac River. But U.S. legislators appropriated no funds for its construction. When Lossing wrote of Washington's death, nearly eight decades later, the monument was still unfinished. For his part, Lossing dismissed it as an example of the barbarian custom of remembering heroes "with piles of stones."
And, indeed, Washington's monument is not merely the magnificent cairn that Americans visit. It's also the tumultuous apparatus of limited self-government that surrounds it. William Ewart Gladstone, himself four times prime minister of Britain, got it precisely right: "I have always regarded the American Constitution as the most remarkable work known to men in modern times." More than any other single person, Washington made it work. His last words are his epitaph: Tis well.