SHREVEPORT – When historical interpreter Brian Hilton donned his powdered wig and full Continental Army commander’s uniform as he walked through campus on his way Tuesday’s “Lunch with George Washington”, students stopped, stared and even followed America’s first president into the LSUS Ballroom.
On Sept. 15, 1776, the real George Washington wish he would have had that effect on his soldiers 250 years ago when British and Hessian forces carried out the world’s largest amphibious invasion on Manhattan.
The Continental Army was but a dream just one year prior, and now troops fled without firing a shot when the might of the largest and arguably greatest empire in world history sailed into Kip’s Bay to push the rebellious Americans out of New York City.
Washington yelled, screamed, berated his troops, even hitting soldiers with the flat part of his sword as he encouraged his men to stay and fight.
“The game was pretty near up,” Hilton’s version of Washington told the crowd of the “shattering and humiliating defeat.” “This is what I was supposed to defend my country with?”
That’s how Hilton and esteemed Revolutionary War historian Dr. Edward Lengel introduced the audience to the event – an improvised conversation between Lengel and “Washington” designed to bring the audience closer to Washington the man and not just the heroic legend, general and president.
The event is part of LSUS’s three-day celebration of Constitution Day, which is Thursday.
Hilton, considered the country’s foremost Washington historical interpreter, spent a decade at Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, Va., studying Washington’s letters and being in Washington’s environment.
What Lengel called “one of the darkest moments” of the Revolution and Washington’s life did eventually change despite the Continentals losing about 14,000 of their 19,000 men in the New York/New Jersey campaign over those two months.
The author of a Washington biography “General George Washington: A Military Life” said Washington was able to preserve what was left of the army despite what he called a two-front war with the British and with the Continental Congress.
“Congress insisted that Washington defend the indefensible New York City,” Lengel said. “Washington faced not only defeat but potentially the loss of his entire army because the British nearly cut off the force.”
“Weeks passed before Congress gave permission to withdraw.”
Tears streamed down Washington’s face as he watched the capitulation of Fort Washington and the 3,000 soldiers inside.
Washington did outmaneuver the British and his detractors both in the military and Congress in the coming months, highlighted by the famous Christmas Night crossing of the Delaware River in a campaign that restored control of most of New Jersey.
The Americans captured much of the invading army from Canada as they bogged down in upstate New York at Saratoga in late 1977.
Washington slowly rebuilt his reputation both as a commander and as a politician despite a smear propaganda campaign by the British that lasted in 1779.
“Status as a gentleman with upstanding character were worth their weight in gold,” Hilton’s Washington said. “A man trying to serve and do his best and looking for the approval – well earned and truly earned – of his fellow citizens. That’s the long and short of what I was after from an early age from the war against the French and their Native American allies.
“Trying to do the right thing, the honorable thing. To do the right thing by my country.”
The focus didn’t remain on just the Revolutionary War, or the “War for Independence” as it was called during that time.
“Doing the right thing” meant that Washington needed to grapple with the “one unavoidable subject of regret” of his life – being a slave owner.
The third-generation slave owner from Virginia’s opinion of slavery did shift throughout his life, but ultimately his enslaved persons weren’t freed until his final will and testament did so in 1799.
He favored gradual emancipation for the country overall as the prevailing thought of the day expected a Civil War to be fought at some point over the volatile topic.
“Maybe not enough but a beginning,” is how Hilton described Washington’s view on slavery, adding that Washington would have left his beloved Mount Vernon to live in the North had the slavery issue come to a head in his lifetime.
Another topic on which Washington’s view was much less ambiguous was the role parties and factions could play in the demise of the Republic.
“My advice today would have been the same as it was in 1796 – when it comes to the Union and to the label American, have that be the label or tag on which you are distinguished, not by some state or party label,” Hilton’s Washington said. “There was a time during the Revolution when we believed that party and faction were and ever would be the bane of republics.
“History was replete with examples of how republics fell to party and faction, like Rome, when violence was considered as the right way to deal with disagreements. This is not something new to your time. We never ran for office or chased it – we ‘stood’ for office. The office becomes the person, not the other way around.”
