the greatest man in the world

In May 1782 a young officer at the Newburgh encampment, Lewis Nicola, put in writing what many officers were whispering behind the scenes: that the Continental Congress’s erratic conduct of the war had exposed the weakness of all republics and the certain disaster that would befall postwar America unless Washington declared himself king. (If the title itself caused problems, Nicola wrote, perhaps a less offensive name could be invented to appease public opinion.) Washington responded with a stern lecture to “banish these thoughts from your Mind,” and denounced the scheme as “big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country.” When word of Washington’s response leaked out to the world, no less an expert on the subject than George III was heard to say that, if Washington resisted the monarchical mantle and retired, as he always said he would, he would be “the greatest man in the world.”


George Washington to Lewis Nicola, 22 May 1782, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. (Washington, DC, 1931-39), which also reproduces sections of Nicola’s letter to Washington. For the remark by George III, se Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, 1984), 13, as quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. p.139