The Art of Command

Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell

Harry S. Laver,Jeffrey J. Matthews

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780813138923
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

What essential leadership lessons do we learn by distilling the actions and ideas of great military commanders such as George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Colin Powell? That is the fundamental question underlying The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell. The book illustrates that great leaders become great through conscious effort—a commitment not only to develop vital skills but also to surmount personal shortcomings. Harry S. Laver, Jeffrey J. Matthews, and the other contributing authors identify nine core characteristics of highly effective leadership, such as integrity, determination, vision, and charisma, and nine significant figures in American military history whose careers embody those qualities. The Art of Command examines each figure's strengths and weaknesses and how those attributes affected their leadership abilities, offering a unique perspective of military leadership in American history. Laver and Matthews have assembled a list of contributors from military, academic, and professional circles, which allows the book to encompass diverse approaches to the study of leadership.

1

Integrity and Leadership

George Washington

Caroline Cox

In March 1783, when peace negotiations with Great Britain were under way and the end of the Revolutionary War was in sight, the American army faced one of its greatest crises. The restless officers of the Continental Army believed they had endured enough hardship. Their pay was in arrears, as usual, and their accounts had not been settled for the food and clothing that they had provided for their men. From their winter quarters at Newburgh, New York, the officers petitioned Congress in Philadelphia to address their grievances. They even hinted of a possible mutiny. Some congressional delegates were sympathetic to their plight, and perhaps a few hoped that discontent in the army would lead to a change in the constitutional arrangements that would give Congress the authority to tax the states. But whatever political intrigue swirled, the Continental Congress had no funds to pay the officers what they were owed. General George Washington wrote to his former aide de camp, Alexander Hamilton, “The sufferings of a complaining Army on the one hand and the inability of Congress and tardiness of the States on the other, are the forebodings of evil.” He feared the situation would “end in blood.”¹

The evil that Washington feared manifested itself on 10 March, and in facing it, he staked his own integrity. The crisis began when he was handed an anonymously written flyer that called the officers of the army to a meeting. The note warned ominously, “The army has its alternative.” One alternative was for the army to refuse to disarm if a peace treaty were struck with Britain. If no peace were negotiated, the army could also disband, leaving the nation to deal with the British without armed forces.²

GEORGE WASHINGTON

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Shocked by the threat of disobedience, Washington acted quickly. He issued general orders the next day that strongly condemned such “disorderly proceedings.” Recognizing that the groundswell of unhappiness had to be quelled, Washington called for his own meeting of the officer corps. Before it could take place, however, the anonymous author issued another flyer. It claimed that Washington's agreement to meet with the officers indicated his sympathy for their cause, and he had thus “sanctified” their complaints.³ The meeting would be tense.

On 15 March, promptly at noon, Washington addressed his assembled officers and, in one of the most moving speeches of his long public life, defused the crisis and transformed his disgruntled, mutinous officer corps into dutiful servants of the new nation. He accomplished this feat by interlocking his own reputation for integrity with their actions, by speaking with eloquence, and by having a small measure of luck. Washington embodied the ideal of the officer and gentleman. An unflinching commitment to safeguard his reputation for personal honor had always guided his actions. Thus his call for his officers to remember their own “sacred honor” had profound meaning. He encouraged them to rebuff those who sought to “overturn the liberties of our Country.” He implored them to do nothing “which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained.” In addition to reminding them of their own honor and integrity and of the great cause for which they all labored, Washington spoke of his own commitment and integrity and linked his star to their conduct: “I have never left your side one moment.…I have been the constant companion and witness of your Distress, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your Merits.…I have ever considered my own Military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the Army.”⁴

Washington's speech was eloquent and moving, infused with candor and genuine emotion. A happy accident also served him well. In explaining the country's dire financial difficulties, he read aloud a letter written by Joseph Jones, a congressional delegate from Virginia. Washington struggled to read this densely written text, which did not make for scintillating speechifying. He pulled his spectacles out from his pocket to read more easily. As he did so, he casually commented to the crowd, “Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.” The aside profoundly moved his audience and dissipated the tension. After Washington left the room, the officers reasserted their loyalty to Congress and entrusted the general to negotiate with that body on their behalf. The so-called Newburgh conspiracy was over.⁵

In a military career that endured a variety of crises—fiscal, logistical, and military—the crisis at Newburgh during the last winter of the war exemplified the importance of Washington's integrity to his effective leadership. Later generations of historians were not alone in citing the centrality of his integrity. Washington himself had consciously brought this quality to his duties as commander in chief. It was one of the primary characteristics that contemporaries recognized in him and that earned him the generalship of the American army. In the eighteenth century, the word “integrity” was not used lightly. Its meaning was profound. To have integrity meant to be independent, incorruptible, selfless, dedicated, honest, and of sound moral principle. One had to be perceived as responsible and trustworthy in every setting and circumstance, whether social, financial, or political. A person of integrity was true to all personal commitments and, as a result, was capable of building and sustaining trusting relationships.⁶

When Washington forestalled a possible mutiny, it was an accomplishment borne of his stellar reputation for integrity. He had consistently demonstrated his commitment to the patriotic cause. He had built trusting relationships with his officers. When he reminded them of their common larger purpose against the British, he was in fact reminding them of their own obligation to act with integrity. Through his war service, Washington had come to epitomize the cultural ideals of military and gentlemanly honor, of which integrity was the central quality, and his officers admired him accordingly.

Washington's influence over his officers would have been limited had his integrity been an abstract virtue. However, he had demonstrated it continuously throughout the war and thus earned the respect of the army and Congress. Both had given him enormous power over all their lives. Congress had channeled huge sums of money through his hands and granted him considerable latitude in war planning and in matters of civilian and military relations. He never once abused that trust. Indeed, he had been reluctant at times to use the full range of authority granted him. The officers and men of the army had accepted his leadership and his authority to make life-or-death decisions. Washington had used his integrity and the trust that it generated to keep the army together as it struggled against the British, then the most powerful army in the world. As commander in chief, he wielded considerable influence yet led by example, demonstrating personal courage, financial honesty, and steadfast political commitment. Drawing on modern theories of management, we can see that Washington offered his men both transactional leadership, an exchange of interests and responsibilities to meet individual needs, and transformational leadership, a chance to participate in something larger than themselves. Washington, of course, knew nothing of these academic theories; instead he acted on the bases of character and experience.

Even as a youth, Washington sought to act in ways that would bring him respect as a gentleman of integrity. Although he never actually chopped down a cherry tree and then refused to lie about it, young Washington consciously thought about how to acquire a good reputation. To be a gentleman was a social necessity for a prosperous man in eighteenth-century Western society generally and in Virginia society particularly. Financial independence was part of the equation, but one also had to be a man of knowledge, manners, and honor. Many men who aspired to be gentlemen failed to live up to this cultural ideal, but Washington was determined to be respected. When he was about fifteen years old, he famously transcribed 110 rules of civility, which he copied from a widely available courtesy book on good manners. Two central themes of these rules were that respect should be given to others when due and that respect from others was earned by one's personal conduct. Guided by these cultural values, Washington always tried to act in ways that would earn him respect.⁷

Washington's integrity was shaped by his father and his older half brother, Lawrence, by his own sociability, by his ambition, and by his inquiring mind. His quick temper might have derailed him, but he controlled it reasonably well. Born in 1732 to a prosperous planter, Washington received a mostly informal education, provided at different times by his father, Lawrence, tutors, and teachers. This improvised schooling served him well. He possessed a curious mind and loved grappling with detail. His father died when he was eleven years old, and Lawrence, fourteen years George's senior, became the family patriarch. Although Lawrence left George in order to manage Mount Vernon, a family property, he stayed in close contact with his younger brother, offering him guidance, adventure, direction, and an education. Lawrence's marriage to Ann Fairfax connected the Washingtons to one of Virginia's wealthiest families and swept George into a higher social world, where a reputation for integrity was paramount.⁸ After Lawrence's death, young George seized the opportunity to demonstrate his managerial and leadership abilities. Not only did he skillfully organize and administer his brother's confused business affairs, but he also assumed Lawrence's position in the Virginia militia—becoming a regional adjutant at twenty-one.⁹

Washington's experiences leading the militia and subsequently provincial troops in the Ohio Valley in 1754 and through the French and Indian War were formative, and they laid the foundation for his public reputation as a leader of ability, energy, and integrity. He developed his skills in the field, observing experienced British officers and gaining practical knowledge by building fortifications, managing scarce men and materiel, and administering the complex details necessary to operating an army. He augmented this learning with extensive reading of classical literature, such as Julius Caesar's Commentaries, and contemporary training manuals, such as Humphrey Bland's Treatise of Military Discipline. While youthful inexperience caused him to make critical mistakes in tactics, he demonstrated his ability to think clearly in the midst of chaos. During the infamous defeat of the British forces under General Edward Braddock at the hands of the French and Indians in 1755, he remained coolheaded and competent. As the British troops embarked on an ignoble retreat and many officers lay dead or dying, including Braddock himself, Washington brought order to the confusion and ensured the safe return of the survivors. He secured Braddock's body, gave him a dignified funeral, and took news of the disaster back to military and civilian leaders. Washington's integrity was exemplified by his honest financial management while in command of the Virginia provincial troops. The exigencies of war required him to manage significant sums of money, and unlike some other leaders, Washington consistently resisted the temptation to pad his own expenses. In fact, he brazenly assured the governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, that “no man, that ever was employed in a public capacity, has endeavored to discharge the trust reposed in him with greater honesty, and more zeal for the country's interest, than I have done.” Having thus conducted himself with honor and excelled as an administrator and leader, Washington emerged from the war with a well-deserved reputation for ability and integrity.¹⁰

Washington's reputation as a man of honor and competence was solidified in the postwar era when he fully entered public life. He served as a vestryman in his church, as a representative in the House of Burgesses, and eventually as a member of the Continental Congress. He continued to read widely, mastered new farming methods, and studied his community. His personal fortune, which was enhanced greatly by his marriage to the wealthy widow Martha Custis, helped to secure him further prominence. One could be a man of integrity without amassing substantial wealth, of course, but it was widely considered that only a gentleman of financial independence could serve the public interest without obligation to any individual or political faction. Not many of Washington's contemporaries attained the ideal of financial independence. As the colonial political crisis with Great Britain intensified in the years before the Revolutionary War, even the most prosperous Virginia gentlemen experienced cash flow problems as tobacco prices fell and western land speculation failed to yield immediate profits. Washington also encountered such problems. He was in debt to his London agent, but unlike many others, he had diversified his crops and had not recklessly gambled on frontier real estate. In short, Washington's prudent management kept his wealth secure, and he came to epitomize the ideal public servant: independent and incorruptible.¹¹

Washington's reputation as a man of character and integrity preceded him as he moved from Virginia to the national stage. His moral character was especially admired by members of the Continental Congress and other leaders. American patriots often suspected that many of their travails with the British government came from the intrigues of placemen, men who held patronage appointments and who were forever maneuvering for personal advancement rather than the public good. Thus, when congressional delegates were considering who should command armed forces, they were dismayed by men who actively lobbied for the position, such as John ...