Now that the MAGA Republicans have become the party of peace and abandoned their former calls of “fight, fight, fight,” it is time to apply their insights and revisit the American Revolution. For if ever an American politician deserved the epithet “warmonger,” it is our first commander-in-chief, George Washington. Washington, after all, led American troops against the British during the American Revolution for seven full years. From the start of hostilities in Concord in 1776 to the signing of the Treaty of Yorktown in 1783, he presided over a military machine that sustained an estimated 70,000 casualties, with 7,000 killed in battle and an additional 17,000 dying of disease.
This horrific toll is testimony to Washington’s unfortunate and callous disregard for the safety of his men. It is true that most of the victims of disease died while prisoners of the British, but that is not their captors’ fault, but that of the commander who sent them into battle. Had Washington cared more about saving lives, he could easily have begun negotiations with the British at any point during those long and bloody seven years. For the British, having invested heavily in their thirteen colonies for over a century, would have been willing to compromise to protect at least a piece of that investment and would surely have abided by the terms of a peace that left them in control of a portion of the future United States.
Instead, the American colonists insisted on all or nothing, disregarding the British right as a great power to maintain a foothold in the New World. The strong British response to American sedition was thus more than justified. What else were they to do? They obviously could not tolerate a restive, armed group of colonists making trouble but instead did the only possible thing: teach the colonists a lesson and restore the rule of British law in the renegade colonies. Great powers have rights.
Of course Washington won in the end, but it was a close-run thing. Had the French had not come to their aid, he and the rebel colonists would surely have lost. The French therefore \ bear some blame for not forcing Washington to the negotiation table. Had they \ threatened to withdraw their fleet, Washington would have had no option but to come to terms with General Cornwallis. Leaving the British with some reward for their long occupancy and military efforts would have been seen by all as a fair price to pay for peace. Let the British keep Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, Washington could have said; let them keep Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah. Just leave us colonists the hinterland. For that hinterland was vast, as Washington well knew, having surveyed lands west of the Appalachias well into the Ohio Valley. There was more than enough land for all.
But instead of listening to the counsel of Benedict Arnold and other patriots who urged an accommodation with the Crown, Washington insisted on more bloodshed. Arnold was thus justified in reaching out to the British in 1779 with offers of a separate peace in an attempt to spare lives on both sides. And when he offered to surrender West Point, New York, the following year, only the short-sightedness of the British prevented them from agreeing to his price of $45 million in today’s currency, thereby prolonging the war in turn.
All this underscores Washington’s fatal and tragic limitation as a war leader. He was blind to the need for peace and put his fellow countrymen through an ordeal that a wiser leader could well have avoided. Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Monmouth—how many battlefields in the former thirteen colonies are still stained with American, British, and Hessian blood? Far too many.
By insisting on total victory, Washington also set a terrible precedent. But rather than being blinded his example, or by outworn slogans such as Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death” and New Hampshire’s motto “live free or die,” we should embrace the imperative of peace. Moreover, it is our clear duty to save others from pursuing unwinnable wars of independence. If we cannot undo Washington’s bloody trail through American history, we can at least prevent others from fighting for an illusory freedom in ways they will later regret. There are no winners in wartime. MAGA Republicans have understood this and are ready to champion peace, if only we will listen.