The Constitutions of Antiquity
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of Roman historians—emphasized the threat of corruption and provided
object lessons on how it might be avoided.
Above all, the Americans valued republican virtue, and the American
leader who prized it the most was George Washington. In his own lifetime, Washington came to symbolize republican virtue. The story popularized by Parson Weems that Washington could not ‘‘tell a lie’’ when he
was once accused of chopping down a cherry tree was a myth; and yet
there was an element of truth in it, for Washington was a true public servant whose honesty and integrity were above reproach. Had he been a
lesser man, hungry for power and glory, he might have exploited his
enormous popularity among the American people to crown himself king
or establish a military dictatorship, as Napoleon Bonaparte did in France.
But Washington patterned his conduct in war and politics on that of
Cincinnatus, the great Roman patriot and statesman who never sought
power for himself, who answered Rome’s call when he was needed and
returned to the plow when the crisis had passed. After the Revolution,
Washington’s example, the general appeal of Cincinnatus, and the patriotic zeal of American revolutionary war leaders inspired the creation of
the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization for officers of the Continental Army. Some politicians expressed concern when the Society first came
into existence that it might be part of a military conspiracy to overthrow
the government, but Washington’s well-known hostility toward such )