In 1965 James Flexner published the first volume of his biography of George Washington in which he coined the term now indelibly stamped on the image of the iconic Founder: Washington was the “indispensable man.”1 Supposedly, he was the individual central to American victory in the struggle for independence and without whom the cause would have failed. No one has seriously disputed the importance of Washington’s role; more than anyone, the rebel commander in chief emerged as the public face of the Revolution, the Olympian figure who persevered through the darkest days of the War for Independence and led his ragged Continentals to victory.
But indispensable? Really? Was any one individual caught up in a movement as broad and multifaceted as the revolutionary struggle really irreplaceable? John Adams, one of the men who proposed Washington as patriot commander in chief, thought not. “The Idea that any one Man alone can save Us,” he wrote to his friend Benjamin Rush, “is too silly for any Body . . . to harbor for a Moment.” In his view the Revolution was too big an event to ride on the fortunes of one man. But Adams instinctively distrusted powerful generals as threats to liberty, and he ventured his opinion in early 1778 when Washington’s generalship had come under considerable criticism.2
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