On December 23, 1783, George Washington stood before the Congress of the Confederation in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. The war was over. The Treaty of Paris had been signed in September, and the British had evacuated New York in November. He commanded the army that had won independence, it was still assembled, and it was loyal to him personally, far more than to the weak and broke Congress sitting in front of him. He had come to give his commission back.
The chamber was packed with delegates, citizens, and officers. James McHenry, a delegate from Maryland, recorded that Washington's voice faltered and sank as he spoke. David Howell of Rhode Island described "a most copious shedding of tears." Washington said, "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life." He handed the document to Thomas Mifflin, the president of Congress, and went home to Mount Vernon.
Victorious generals did not do this. Caesar crossed the Rubicon and Cromwell became Lord Protector. King George III heard of it through the painter Benjamin West. When the king asked what Washington would do now, West said he believed Washington would return to his farm, and the king replied, as West later told the American minister Rufus King, that if he did, he would be "the greatest character of the age."
Washington did not stay retired. The Articles of Confederation were failing, and in 1787 he was the one man whose presence could make the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia legitimate. He was elected its president, and after ratification he was the unanimous choice for the first presidency. He took office on April 30, 1789, and served eight years. He managed Hamilton and Jefferson, two brilliant men who despised each other. He kept the nation out of the French Revolutionary Wars when both factions wanted him to pick a side. He set the precedents for how a president behaves.
By 1796 he was sixty-four, exhausted, and under attack in the Jeffersonian press as a monarchist and a fraud. He had wanted to go home since 1789. He also understood that the presidency was still him. No law kept him from staying until he died, and the 22nd Amendment would not exist until 1951. If he stayed, the next man might stay too, and within a generation the office could look like a throne.
On September 19, 1796, his Farewell Address appeared in David Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia. The ideas were his and much of the prose was Hamilton's. It warned against partisan factions, permanent foreign alliances, and public debt. The electorate would have returned him, and he left anyway. He died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799, less than three years later, a private citizen by his own choice.
His example held without any law behind it for a century and a half. Franklin Roosevelt won four terms and died in office in 1945, and the country, shaken, ratified the 22nd Amendment in 1951 to write down what Washington had done twice on his own.
Read the full essay on Substack: https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-president-who-could-have-been