After the war ended, Washington declared, “I attribute all glory to that Supreme Being,” who had caused the several forces that contributed to America’s triumph to harmonize perfectly together. No people “had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs,” he wrote in 1792, than those of the United States.”
Scholars and ordinary Americans will continue to debate the precise nature of Washington’s faith, but clearly it became deeper as a result of his trying and sometimes traumatic experiences as commander in chief of the Continental Army and the nation’s first president, and it significantly affected his understanding of and his actions in both positions.
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