The Power of the Herd. Linda Kohanov
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my faith in the sanity our country’s original vision. I was, for a time, filled with such sincere and fervent feelings of patriotism that friends and family members would stare at me wide-eyed, leaning backward, glancing toward the door. “We were cheated by the public school system,” I’d declare. “Our naive yet well-meaning teachers were making us memorize dates and names and superficial facts when they could have been teaching us the process Washington went through to become the ultimate leader and citizen of a free society. True democracy can’t possibly thrive in this country until the abilities that Washington modeled become the rule rather than the exception, not just in politicians, but in the population at large!”
Then I’d practically shout, pounding the dining room table, “This ambitious yet essential goal cannot be achieved exclusively through verbal-oriented education!”
I’ve since calmed down considerably, but I still believe I was on to something. While my high school history teachers were devising coolly objective multiple-choice tests involving dates like 1776, names like Benedict Arnold, and events like the Boston Tea Party, essential facts about George Washington’s true genius were languishing in obscurity, information that would have given me a road map to becoming a more courageous, adaptable, and insightful leader. I would have understood the hardships, mistakes, and betrayals he endured, how he rose above these challenges without losing his heart and soul. I would have glimpsed the power of charisma balanced by integrity and empathy. And perhaps most important, I might have understood the extent to which visionary leadership in particular demands qualities a lot more sophisticated and mysterious than passion, idealism, and a talent for risk management. Innovators charged with transforming society must develop a paradoxical combination of conviction and adaptability, demonstrating a level of endurance so high it’s contagious while consciously engaging in the lesser-known, largely nonverbal art of fear management.
The Presence of Power
In the winter of 1777, George Washington somehow inspired a ragged group of soldiers not only to stick around for the Second Battle of Trenton but to actually win it. John Howland, a young private from Rhode Island, lived to tell the story. In an account published fifty-four years after the event, he struggled to remember what the general said but never forgot how it felt to borrow the man’s courage.
“Lord Cornwallis was on the march from Princeton with, as it was said, ten thousand men to beat up our quarters,” Howland reported, estimating that the “whole army of the United States” at that time was “supposed to amount to about four thousand men.” And that wasn’t even the worst of the news. The odds were against them in so many other, thoroughly demoralizing ways: “If any fervent mind should doubt this,” he emphasized, “it must be from not knowing the state of our few, half-starved, half-frozen, feeble, worn-out men, with old fowling pieces for muskets, and half of them without bayonets, and the States so disheartened, discouraged, or poor, that they sent no reinforcements, no recruits to supply this handful of men.”
As the British and their fierce allies, the Hessians, marched on Trenton, New Jersey, from their garrison in Princeton, Howland was one of a thousand troops assigned to delay the enemy’s advance through a gutsy attack and retreat/ambush, across Assunpink Creek. “The bridge was narrow,” he remembered, “and our platoons were, in passing it, crowded into a dense and solid mass, in the rear of which the enemy were making their best efforts.” Yet in that moment of utter confusion and desperation, Howland touched a vision of power, gaining, in the crush of battle, a sense of steadiness, renewal, and awe: “The noble horse of Gen. Washington stood with his breast pressed close against the end of the west rail of the bridge, and the firm, composed, and majestic countenance of the general inspired confidence and assurance in a moment so important and critical. In this passage across the bridge rail, it was my fortune to be next the west rail, and arriving at the end of the bridge, I pressed against the shoulder of the general’s horse, and in contact with the general’s boot. The horse stood as firm as the rider, and seemed to understand that he was not to quit his post and station.”
Washington alone did not create that transformational effect. It was the dedication and poise his mount exhibited that inspired the same in young Howland. Yet to fathom what an outrageous achievement it was for Washington to find and train an animal capable of enduring such a scene, you have to appreciate, first of all, the horror of the sound alone. For thousands of years, warriors fought with swords, spears, and arrows. The Revolutionary War seethed with musket fire and cannon blasts. And something else: “Horses were screaming on the battlefield,” historian James Parrish Hodges reminded me during an interview in which we talked about Washington’s leadership abilities. Riding a prey animal, a vegetarian, a species that much prefers flight over fight, anywhere near the scent of blood — let alone the din of absolute chaos and unmitigated agony — goes against every hardwired impulse the horse possesses. If the general’s mount had been a machine programmed for survival, incapable of transcending instinct, such an act would have been impossible. Luckily, the general didn’t believe this was true, or he wouldn’t have been able to ride the same two trusted equine companions through the entire revolution with the odds stacked against them all, horse and human alike.
“It was a miracle,” Hodges says of the colonists’ success. “Washington tapped more in his people than they themselves thought they could give.” And he never would have lived through the first of those battles if he hadn’t inspired similar acts of heroism in his horses. After all, a good twenty years earlier Washington had received a promotion to the rank of colonel when Joshua Fry, commander of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War, had died after falling from his horse.
The Silence of Power
While brief, eyewitness accounts of Washington’s impressive riding skills were commonplace, historians past and present have failed to recognize the importance of his distinction as one of the finest horse trainers on either side of the Atlantic. To be sure, Thomas Jefferson characterized him as “the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.” Yet few politicians and writers at that time understood the equestrian arts well enough to fathom the general’s genius in that arena. Our only glimpse comes from the marquis de Chastellux, a French nobleman, military officer, and philosopher who served as liaison between Washington and the French forces that ultimately helped defeat the British during the Siege of Yorktown in 1781. Chastellux published his complete recollections of the American War of Independence five years later, including a description of his subsequent travels through the newly formed United States. Because of his literary talent and acute sense of observation, he produced what are still considered the most vivid descriptions of George Washington as an effective yet profoundly human leader in wartime. A peacetime visit to Mount Vernon gave Chastellux a still deeper understanding of his former comrade in arms.
Two crucial aspects of Washington’s life and personality made it difficult for anyone to know him intimately, let alone write about him effectively: his preference for silence over casual conversation and the vast amount of time he spent in the saddle, for business as well as pleasure. As an accomplished equestrian himself, Chastellux was simply able to go where few men had gone before — riding with the Revolutionary War hero, on one of his exquisitely trained horses, no less.
“The weather being fair,” Chastellux wrote, “I got on horseback, after breakfasting with the General. He was so attentive as to give me the horse he rode on the day of my arrival, which I had greatly commended. I found him as good as he is handsome, but above all well broke and well trained having a good mouth, easy in hand, and stopping short in a gallop without bearing on the bit. I mention these minute particulars, because it is the General himself who breaks all his own horses, and he is a very excellent and bold horseman, leaping the highest fences, and going extremely quick, without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle, or letting his horse run wild.”
Washington could not have used abusive dominance techniques to create a mount of this caliber. In equestrian terms, he taught the horse to “carry himself” with the utmost grace and responsiveness. The general rode with a light yet persuasive touch, creating an agile, thoughtful partner rather than a dissociative, machinelike mode of transportation. And Chastellux, a man who’d visited the stables of European royalty, was impressed.
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