by Robert P. Watson
Robert P. Watson is Distinguished Professor of History at Lynn University and the author or editor of over 40 books, including George Washington’s Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and Nation
(Georgetown University Press, 2021).
We now find ourselves more divided than any time since the Civil War. As we endeavor to heal the deep cultural rifts and renew a sense of political unity, we would do well to consider a moment in history.
Against all odds, George Washington and a ragtag band of poorly trained blacksmiths and ill-equipped farmers managed to pull off a most unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War. While the cessation of military operations in 1783 brought a long-awaited peace to the former colonies and freedom from the Crown, the struggle for independence was not over. Far from it. For the colonists, it would not be a simple matter of transitioning from soldier to citizen or from revolutionary to American. Rather, the civic vacuum created by the end of British rule posed a number of immediate and daunting challenges, most of which the fledgling nation was ill prepared to address. The question on everyone’s mind was, most assuredly, “What happens next?”