Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington

Abstract

Between 1800 and 1865, Americans remembered George Washington as a man of remoteness, gentility, and flawless virtue; after 1865 they began to remember him as an ordinary, imperfect man with whom common people could identify. Washington's post-Civil War transformation adds weight to Mead's and Halbwachs's belief that the past is mutable, made and remade for present use. Yet Americans never forgot Washington's original, aristocratic image. Setting limits on later generations' ability to democratize Washington, this enduring image reflects Durkheim's and Shils's ideas on how collective memories outlive changes in society. The very nature of these societal changes, however, determined how much of Washington's original image was revised and retained. Thus separate theories cannot explain change and continuity in collective memory; a single theory must explain both. T he memory of George Washington, a nondemocratic military and political leader, was democratized between 1865 and 1920, a period that included an industrial revolution, a reform era to correct its abuses, and a war from which America emerged as a world power. Beyond this period Washington's image continued to evolve. Throughout the 1920s, Washington came to be regarded by some as a complete businessman and captain of industry. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he became the object of both cynical debunking and spectacular bicentennial birthday rites. After World War II, biographers wrote about him in unprecedented detail. The full complexity of his image, however, was established by 1920. An analysis of this image-making process promotes fuller understanding of both the collective memory of Washington and the collective memory as a general aspect of culture.