Who are your top 5 best Presidents?

[webster]

Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian

Again, that has nothing to do with his presidency. Being in the military does not give you a lifetime free pass on later tyranny as an elected executive. Not even for him.

But if we are going to use Washington's life prior to his presidency to add/subtract from his later on career in the White House, let us recall that George got his start in politics in the VA House of Burgesses, where he got very involved in the fight against what? Oh that's right, a bunch of new taxes that Britain had levied on the colonies to pay for what? Oh that's right, the big time costs of the French and Indian War.

Hmmm...that feels relevant somehow to later hypocrisy as Tyrant in Chief....

Oh wait, it's because that was EXACTLY what the Whiskey Tax was. It was a heavy handed new tax to pay for the costs of an earlier war, and it angered the population, same as Britain's various taxes from 1754-1775 angered the Colonies overall. And like King George III before, the newly minted US King George IV had his troops enforce tax policy at gunpoint. Except in George IV's case, the king won, not the revolutionaries, so we consider it no blood, no foul.

Hamilton's whiskey tax was the exact same thing and for the exact same reason as Britain's stamp/tea/etc taxes that led to the 1776-1779 kerfluffle. And the revolutionaries of the Whiskey Rebellion responded exactly like the patriots of the Boston tea Party and their ilk, just with different outcomes and different versions of their "patriotism" written about later.

Last but not least, while I understand that it was perfectly legal and widely accepted in his time, we are also talking about a man who owned slaves. So before you canonize the man, recall that he held other humans in chattel bondage.

Just a note about Washington and slavery. His view was very different than many slaveholders; he did not see them as subhuman (as Jefferson did Notes on the State of Virginia) and he knew slavery was not economically viable, but how to free them under the law at the time? First, he could not free the dower slaves at Mt. Vernon. While they were Martha Washington's to use while she lived, as a married woman she could not own property (which under VA law they were legally real estate) and had to be passed to male descendants of her first husband's line. By freeing his slaves, he would have broken with his practice of not breaking up slave families comprised of his slaves and dower slaves. If freed, they would be on their own, having to pay a head tax (tithable) or be re-enslaved. Then there was the question of where they would live; by the 1790's the soil at Mt. Vernon was exhausted; not even newly planted trees would live (hence Washington's other business ventures). The wealthiest man in VA to free his slaves was Robert Carter (1728-1804); it literally took him decades to free his slaves: it was expensive legal process since the law required that former slaves who were minors or over 45 be provided for. The 1782 law - An act to authorize the manumission of slaves - permitted manumission by a will but as Robert Carter found out, many courts refused to honor the will and heirs bitterly contested their loss of property and wealth.