The Left’s Plot Against George Washington

In Portland, the BLM mob toppled a statue of George Washington. Four years later, local leftist activists and officials have continued sabotaging efforts to restore it again. In New York City and Chicago, officials have discussed removing statues of Washington. And the Father of our Country isn’t even safe at the University of Washington where calls to remove him continue.

But the War on Washington isn’t just a recent phenomenon.

The Left didn’t want until George Washington was a statue to topple him. Newspapers like The National Gazette, The Philadelphia Aurora and The New York Time Piece, which were the vanguard of the emerging Democratic-Republican party, depicted him being led to the guillotine.

Democrats today claim that they oppose George Washington because he was a slave owner, but why did Democrats who were not only slave owners then but defended slavery (unlike Washington who favored liberating slaves and whose Washington Benevolent Societies were the organizing network for black conservative voters in the 1800s ) oppose him then?

Long before their relatively recent interest in organizing black people, American leftists were great enthusiasts of the French Revolution and favored bringing it to this country. My book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left’, reveals how the Democrats got their start as the “French Party” built around “Democratic Societies” modeled on French radical Jacobin clubs and set up with the aid of foreign emissaries of the French Revolution.

George Washington’s great crime in the eyes of the leftists of his day was his refusal to turn over America to the forces of the French Revolution which was the USSR of its day.

“Ten thousand People in the Streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his House, and effect a Revolution in the Government, or compell it to declare War in favour of the French Revolution,” John Adams would later remember.

French Foreign Minister Charles Delacroix had urged Citizen Pierre-Auguste Adet, the French ambassador, to “use all means in his power to bring about a successful revolution, and Washington’s replacement.”

Washington, always a fighter, would not take the leftist campaign against him lying down.

In his address to Congress, President George Washington had warned of the threat of “certain self-created societies.” By those he meant the Democratic Societies. In a private letter he even more explicitly described how “these societies were instituted by the artful & designing members (many of their body I have no doubt mean well, but know little of the real plan),” by an agent of the French government “under popular and fascinating guises, the most diabolical attempts to destroy the best fabric of human government.” The Democratic Societies, he warned, were created to “sow Sedition; to poison the minds of the people of this country.”

First Lady Abigail Adams later wrote at the height of the crisis that, “France has setled her plan of subjugating America” through “Agents and Emissaries, whom with truth & reason she bosts of having thickly scatterd through our Country, saving her Principles, her depravity of Manners, her Atheism in every part of the united States” so that “she will seduce the mind & sap the foundation of our strongest pillars, Religion & Government.”

“And if there be a Nation on Earth capable of going the necessary lengths, and making the proper Sacrifices to stop its course,—it must be one that is already possesed of substantial Liberty, that knows how to appreciate it, & how to distinguish between it, and that Sort of Liberty which France is trying to propogate throughout the World.”

That “sort of liberty” with its depravity, as opposed to American liberty, was the Left.

And in ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left’, I describe the rise of the American Left and its violent and treasonous plots against Washington and America.

Despite the threats and attacks, George Washington not only refused to give in to the Left, but five years away from death and suffering from arthritis and hearing loss, he became the first and last president to lead troops in the field when he rode out to confront the Whiskey Rebellion.

“We are ready for a state of revolution and the guillotine of France,” the leader of the Mingo Creek Democratic Society had declared. But the guillotine proved no match for George.

Washington rode out with the troops because he feared that America was on the verge of falling to “mob or Club government” under which “there can be no security for life—liberty—or

Property”. While Washington won the battle, he earned the undying enmity of the Democrats.

In his Farewell Address on leaving office, George Washington warned about the “mischiefs of the spirit of party” which “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption”.

Both the French and their leftist allies in America were furious at Washington’s message.

“If ever there was a period for rejoicing, this is the moment,” the Philadelphia Aurora responded. “This man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country is this day reduced to a level with his fellow citizens.”

Adet, the French ambassador, sent a copy of the Farewell Address to his government while raging against “the lies it contains, the tone of insolence”. Adet and the French regime launched a campaign of naval terror “to arouse the attention of the public at the moment of choosing the electors who must choose the President.” The campaign was treasonously coordinated “with our friends in Congress” who, according to Adet, “only saw me last winter in secret.”

But attempting to terrorize Americans backfired badly. Adams responded to French attacks on American ships with the Quasi-War and Jefferson refused to end America’s neutrality.

Nonetheless the Democratic Societies influenced the new Democratic-Republican Party and American leftists continued to dream of bringing the French Revolution to these shores.

A toast at the Democratic Society of Philadelphia envisioned France’s revolutionary movement spreading until it will “have the whole earth for its area, and the arch of heaven for its dome.”

That mission outlived George Washington and the French Revolution. It continued on through European revolutions, the Communist takeover of the Soviet Union and it still continues today.

That is why leftists really want Washington to fall.

'Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against The Left' is now out. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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