The American founders could teach Putin a lesson: Provoking an unnecessary war is not how to prove your masculinity

Vladimir Putin (top), then Russia’s prime minister, takes part in a judo training session during a visit to St Petersburg on Dec. 18, 2009. Alexey Druzhinin/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP via Getty Images^[11]

On the battlefield

The American founders were often misogynists and racists. They could be reckless and brutal. But they didn’t crave wars just to prove that they were real men.

It’s true that Alexander Hamilton once made a shocking confession to a friend, “I wish there was a War^[12].” But that’s precisely the point: He was a 12-year-old boy when he wrote that, not yet a man.

None of the founders were pacifists^[13]. Together they built a navy and an army. They studied the art of war by reading Julius Caesar^[14] or Humphrey Bland^[15], author of a popular “Treatise of Military Discipline.” They all accepted wars as a necessity, especially when every other option was impractical.

Moreover, they saw war as inevitable because they didn’t trust human nature: “This pugnacious humor of Mankind,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “seems to be the law of his nature^[16].”

“So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities,” James Madison had already declared, that “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts^[17].”

A local volunteer lies dead after the the Russian army shelled an evacuation point in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 6, 2022. Diego Herrera/Europa Press via Getty Images^[18]

The majority of the founders also didn’t shelter in their palaces, as Putin has done, seated at an impossibly long table^[19]. “I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me,” George Washington wrote after the battle of the Monongahela River^[20] in 1755. “Death was levelling my companions on every side of me^[21].”

Washington, Hamilton and others could be easily found on actual battlefields where countless horrors took place^[22].

On May 31, 1777, William Martin, lieutenant of Oliver Spencer’s Additional Continental Regiment, for instance, was ambushed by a British-Hessian unit near Bound Brook, New Jersey. Wounded, he asked for clemency, but to no avail. He was “butchered with the greatest cruelty^[23],” wrote one observer. He was bayoneted about 20 times. His nose was cut off and his eyes yanked out.

Washington ordered some soldiers to bring Martin’s body to his headquarters. He had the body washed and shown as proof of the enemy’s inhumanity and lack of virility. Eventually, he sent the body to the British commander, General Cornwallis^[24].

‘It is with infinite regret, I am again compelled, to remonstrate against that spirit of wanton cruelty, that … influenced the conduct of your soldiery,’ Gen. George Washington wrote to British Lieutenant General Cornwallis on June 2, 1777. Library of Congress^[25]

‘Never crave wars’

In the 18th century, the soldier was a good example of a truly virile man, but only provided he kept acting soldierly.

Look at our enemies, Washington exclaimed^[26] in a letter to Patrick Henry; look at the spectacle of recklessness they offer. They only bring “devastation,” whether upon “defenceless towns,” or “helpless Women & Children.” His conclusion was clear: “Resentment & unsoldiery practices” have “taken place of all the Manly virtues^[27].”

Walking the razor-thin line between real and pretended masculinity isn’t easy. But 18th-century leaders knew what had to be avoided at all costs. Only “Unmanly Men,” Benjamin Franklin realized^[28], would “come with Weapons against the Unarmed.” They would “use the Sword against Women, and the Bayonet against young Children.”

Manly men, in fact, put up with wars; but they never crave wars, let alone provoke wars, according to the American founders. A virile man, especially a soldier, must be propelled by the vision of an intellectual, cultural and moral refinement: “I must study Politicks and War,” John Adams once wrote, so that “my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy^[29].”

Thomas Paine^[30], the author of influential political pamphlets, would articulate the same idea: “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace^[31].”

That inspiring image of children reaping the fruits of peace — definitely at odds with Putin’s shows of bravado through the years — is taken from the Bible. But the image has a political bent and doesn’t belong to any specific religion: People shall “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more^[32].”

Washington, a man and a leader graced with a hefty dose of masculinity, agreed completely: “That the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks — and, as the Scripture expresses it, the nations learn war no more^[33].”

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Authors: Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino

Read more https://theconversation.com/the-american-founders-could-teach-putin-a-lesson-provoking-an-unnecessary-war-is-not-how-to-prove-your-masculinity-178709

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