Cato, a Tragedy, Part XII: Painful Preeminence, contd.

    Almost two thousand years after the historical Cato sought refuge from Caesar on the coast of Tunisia, Washington likewise attempted to make clear to the men under his command that the suffering their countrymen had asked them to endure was grounded upon an essential, irrefutable, and righteous purpose. As published on the 27^th of August, 1776, the missive in question explained to the soldiers of the Continental Army that,

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

The context, granted, was not quite the same as that of Cato’s cited exclamation. Addison’s hero was trying to remind his wavering followers why it was they were all suffering out there in the desert. Washington was trying to put a little steel into the spines of a group of fighting men who had but recently been farmers and laborers. Nevertheless, their core intentions would seem to align fairly closely. Both men were attempting to allay suffering by appealing to the moral sensibilities of the men under their command. Cato’s followers had already suffered, and seemed to need reminding that they were fighting to uphold something more important than they own comfort. And the soldiers under Washington’s command were about to suffer, and seemed to need to be told that what they were about to endure paled in comparison to what they hoped to achieve. In either case, the essential message was the same: suffer knowingly. Suffer righteously.

    The quality of self-abnegation implicit in such a request also seemed to be an impulse which Cato and Washington shared. Both of them, it would seem fair to say, were perhaps a little callous in the extent to which they asked the men under their respective commands to gladly endure tremendous hardship, but they also both appeared to hold themselves to a similar standard of personal behavior. On this subject in particularly, Cato is admirably succinct. Having been informed, in Act 4, Scene II, of the death of his younger son, Marcus, at the hands of the treacherous Syphax, and having expressed a certain amount of envy at the idea that the young man has died for his country, Addison’s hero then turns to his surviving son, Portius, and delivers a very simple – if profound – maxim. “Behold thy brother,” he says, “And remember, / Thy life is not thy own when Rome demands it.” This, as much as anything else he says across the length of Addison’s drama, would seem to sum up Cato’s personal philosophy. Whatever his particular preferences might be, or the hopes he yet harbors for his family, Cato is first and foremost a servant of Rome. Personal glory does not figure into his thinking, nor professional success, nor even a desire for private contentment. Indeed, he will willingly sacrifice all of these things if he feels it is required. And while, at long last, he comes around to recommending that his surviving son seek out a life of rural obscurity in the event that Caesar ultimately triumphs – a life, one is given to imagine, Cato might have hoped would be his own – Addison’s hero remains steadfast to the very end in his dedication to self-sacrifice. “Lose not a thought on me [,]” he thus assures his assembled followers, “I’m out of danger: / Heaven will not leave me in the victor’s hand. / Caesar shall never say, he conquer’d Cato.” Even if he cannot rob the conqueror of his final victory, Cato the Younger pledges to rob him of the chance to pardon an inveterate opponent. It is a small thing, perhaps, in the face of the loss of Rome to tyranny. But it is all that Cato has left to give, and he gives it willingly.  

    George Washington, it is true, was never driven to contemplate suicide by way of rendering service to the United States of America. As mentioned previously, this simply was not something gentlemen in the late 18^th century Anglo-American world were expected to do. That being said, the sense of self-sacrifice displayed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army – what he might have more plainly referred to as his duty – appears very Cato-esque in the degree to which it compelled the man to trade personal comfort for professional obligation. Consider, for example, the opening passage of his First Inaugural Address, delivered on the 30^th of April, 1789. Washington, by this time, was six years out from having resigned his commission as the commanding officer of the Continental Army. The intervening period, to be sure, had not been an unmitigated success. Crop yields at Mount Vernon were poor, a number of the projects that Washington took on – mainly having to do with speculation in land – proved unprofitable, and by the late 1780s he found himself saddled with significant personal debt and a host of creditors who insisted on paying him in increasingly depreciated wartime bills. All the same, he was reportedly quite content to have returned to his homestead and was quite adamant in his hope that he would never leave it again. To that end, while he was very sympathetic to the aims of those who sought to organize a convention in Philadelphia in the late spring of 1787 for the ostensible purpose of modifying the Articles of Confederation, he initially turned down his appointment as a member of the Virginia delegation. Indeed, it was only at the behest of friends and colleagues like James Madison (1751-1836) and Henry Knox (1750-1806) that Washington did ultimately agree to attend, and even then he made a point of informing Virginia’s governor Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) that his acceptance was given with the utmost reluctance. He knew – had been told – that his presence would lend the gathering a degree of dignity and prestige and was willing enough to sanction the efforts of its organizers. But he would have preferred, as ever, to remain in Mount Vernon, and fully intended to do so once the business of the convention was concluded.

    Washington’s election as the first President of the United States naturally disrupted these plans, as his first address after having assumed said office very much makes note. It opens, accordingly, with a declaration on the part of the first man to have assumed what is now considered one of the most significant stations in the history of the world that, “Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month.” In the hurly-burly of the 21^st century, when ego would seem to be a core aspect of the political mindset, this would surely appear to be a deeply confusing – nay, worrying – statement. The Chief Executive, with the power to veto federal legislation, issue pardons, and command the armed forces is anxious that he has just been granted these powers? Bizarre as this kind of attitude might now appear, it was nevertheless very much in keeping with the late 18th century ideal conception of political leadership, as well as with Washington’s personal brand as a leader. He does not seek power, nor is he supposed to. But he grasps it as it is thrust into his hands, and he reflects, with mixed emotions, upon the circumstances which brought him to this place. “On the one hand,” Washington accordingly notes,

I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time.

With this first sentence, the newly inaugurated president is essentially doing two things. First, by saying, “I was summoned by my country,” he is drawing attention to the fact that he did, indeed, feel compelled to accept his election as President. He was nominated, he won, and he was sworn in, and now he is giving this address. In the end, obviously, his sense of duty won out.

    But then Washington goes on to explain that this is not what he would have preferred. After many years of service in Virginia’s colonial militia and the Continental Army, he had come to look very fondly on the notion of being permitted to retire. The degree to which Washington feels suitably fatigued by his experiences is made clear when he notes that his planned retreat to Mount Vernon, “Was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time.” By his own admission, it would seem that the years spent on campaign have taken their toll. Having been nearly killed on any number of occasions, suffered through cold and starvation at Valley Forge, and spent many days in the saddle on half-rations during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, Washington is quite simply very tired, and would like nothing more than to be allowed to spend the rest of his days in peace. His presence in New York City in April of 1789 was the plainest evidence imaginable that he was willing to put off this desire if called upon by his countrymen. But not, it would seem, without some minor degree of reluctance.

    There was more to Washington’s sense of anxiety than just disappointment, however. As it turned out, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army was also more than a little insecure as to his credentials for the office of President. “On the other hand,” he thus explained,

The magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.

It would now seem a terribly charming thing for a leader so widely acclaimed by their countrymen to protest being appointed to a position of leadership by claiming that they were possessed of “inferior endowments.” But such was Washington’s character, though he had already led the Continental Army to victory in the late Revolutionary War. Not only had this feat entailed defeating one of the most well-trained and battled-hardened armies in the 18^th century world, but it had also required the Commander-in-Chief to engage in constant wrangling with Congress and the various states in order to secure much-needed supplies and recruits. Could Washington have been playing up his supposed inadequacies so as to make himself appear humble? Possibly, though his demeanor, as recorded, almost always tended towards sincerity. More likely – contrary evidence notwithstanding – the man simply did not think much of either his abilities or his accomplishments. He had suffered a number of memorable defeats in the opening stages of the Revolutionary War, after all. And he had nearly been replaced as Commander-in-Chief when the American cause seemed very nearly lost. He knew the taste of failure, in short, and was doubtless acutely aware that the stakes he was being asked to accept were as high as any he had ever personally encountered. What if he failed to do justice to the office of President? What if he was unable to make good on the trust that others kept insisting that they invest in his leadership? Anyone might be forgiven for turning down such an offer. And yet, though he thought himself acutely deficient, Washington did not. He wrung his hands, and gave voice to his doubts, and all but told his countrymen that they had made a mistake. But he did all of this in the context of accepting the duty that had been thrust upon him yet again. Cato, he surely told himself, would have done nothing less.

    The sense of duty with which both Cato and Washington took on their respective responsibilities, it should be noted, was distinctly lacking in personal ambition. Indeed, Cato makes a point of explicitly impugning the very concept in Act 4, Scene II. Having been driven to something very near despair upon the death of his son, Marcus, Addison’s hero thus bitterly observes, “The Roman Empire, fall’n! Oh, cursed ambition! / Fall’n into Caesar’s hands! Our great forefathers / Had left him nought to conquer but his country.” Not only, it seems, is Cato disgusted by the covetous impulse which has seemingly driven Caesar to slaughter so many of his countrymen, but he appears also to place some degree of blame upon previous generations of Roman statesman and generals whose constant conquests created a class of rapacious solider-politicians for whom military glory was an end in itself. As for Cato, one is given to imagine that his ideal reward for services rendered to the state conforms rather closely to the lifestyle he urges Portius to pursue in the aforementioned scene. “Retire betimes [,]” he exhorts his son,

            To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field;

            […]

            In humble virtues, and a rural life;

            There live retired, pray for the peace of Rome;

            Content thyself to be obscurely good.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honour is a private station.

Cato cannot embrace this life himself, of course. Caesar’s actions have made such an escape impossible. But the readiness with which he offers the cited description to Portius seems to suggest that this does represent his ideal form of retirement. As the fabled Cincinnatus (519-430 BC) relinquished the dictatorial power thrust into his hands in a moment of crisis and returned to a life of rural toil, so, too, does Addison’s hero believe it proper to forgo ambition once service to the state had been rendered and embrace the peaceful anonymity of the countryside. 

    George Washington, of course, had been compared to the aforementioned Roman statesman Cincinnatus by certain of his countrymen from almost the moment he resigned his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Not only did it appear as though the most powerful and most popular man in all of America has no personal interest in either power or popularity, but his responses thereafter to the petitions of his fellow citizens that he once more play a role in national affairs also made it abundantly clear that a quiet life in the country was really all that he desired. He made this claim, as aforementioned, when he was invited to participate in the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. He made it again, in 1789, by way of the preamble to his First Inaugural Address as President. And in 1796, after having served two terms in office and being very much in a position to serve as many more as he liked – despite the marked turmoil of the second – he announced his long-awaited retirement in just the same terms. “I anticipate,” he said, as part of his closing remarks on the occasion in question,

With pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart [.]

Not only was the act itself of tremendous significance for the nascent American republic, but the manner in which Washington chose to express himself set a powerful precedent for those who would follow in his stead.

    There was to be no emeritus position for the first President of the United States upon retirement, no sinecure from which he would continue to exercise an influence over domestic affairs. Washington was going to leave office, go home to Virginia, and live out the rest of his life amidst his “fellow-citizens,” drawing no more advantage from his actions while in office than anyone might derive from the “good laws” and “free government” which he had endeavored to promote and preserve. This was all that the former Commander-in-Chief wanted or expected, and all that his successors should have desired for themselves in turn. Practically speaking, of course, it wasn’t exactly an ascetic life that Washington sought. Between his plantation at Mount Vernon and his speculation in land, he was personally one of the richest men in the whole of the American republic. And lest it be forgotten, ancient Roman Senators, like Cato the Younger, were uniformly men of wealth and privilege who tended to possess large ancestral estates in the Italian countryside. Neither man, in short, would have to face poverty upon handing over the powers of their office. But asceticism was never the point. Their wealth, such as it was, was their own. Maybe – read, absolutely – they owed it in large part to inheritance or slave labor, but they absolutely did not derive it from political advantage. There was the duty they owed to their fellow citizens to make use of their talents for the good of the community as a whole, and there was the duty they owed to themselves to see to their own personal good in their own personal time. The two were not supposed to meet. Indeed, they were supposed to be kept as far away as possible. This, in essence, is what Cato attempted to sell to Portius, and what Washington embraced as his guiding intention.

    Naturally, given his status as a tragic hero, Cato is not destined to live out his final days in rural repose. On the contrary, his life comes to an end before the final lines of the drama in question are spoken. Desirous of robbing Caesar of the privilege of pardoning his enemy, and having assured himself – with the help of Plato – that his immortal soul has nothing to fear from the death his physical body, Cato plunges a sword into his own breast and delivers a few parting assurances to his gathered family and friends before finally succumbing at the very end of Act 5, Scene I. Among these, it bears noting, is an expression of humility that is made all the more touching by the context in which it is delivered. Cato is dying, the life ebbing from his body with every second that passes. His surviving children are near at hand. His friend and confidante, Lucius, is present. There is nothing more that can be done, nothing more to say that will alter the effect that the life of Cato has exerted upon the world. And yet, as the light fades from his eyes, Addison’s hero finds it in himself to remark, “Oh, ye powers, that search / The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, / If I have done amiss, impute it not— / The best may err [.]” Broadly speaking, this is not a particularly uncommon sentiment to hear from someone who is literally on their deathbed. Imminent demise often seems to have a clarifying effect on one’s perspective, drawing into focus the errors that in life had been obscured by ego and pretense. But Cato would seem to have very little about which he should be sorry. Addison never depicts him as anything less than superhumanly virtuous. Indeed, he is regularly spoken of as an object of adoration amongst his children and his colleagues. And yet, like a pious Calvinist, he remains resistant to pride to the very moment of his death, utterly dismisses the notion that he has lived well and may rest well, and uses the very last jot of energy left in his body to beg forgiveness for any errors he might have unknowingly committed. What more can be asked of anyone? By what surer means could Addison’s hero have demonstrated that he truly was the best of men?    

    George Washington most assuredly would not have made it his life’s ambition to be thought of by kin and countrymen as the better of them all. Constitutionally speaking, he was too humble to imagine himself capable of summiting such a peak. Chalk it up to personality, manners, or some combination of both. All the same, he certainly seemed inclined to live in a Cato-like fashion. That is to say, he always seemed inclined to try to be as virtuous as he could manage, and as humble, and as devoted to the service of his country. To that end, as he closed out the address intended to announce his pending retirement at the end of his second term as President, Washington evinced a typically Cato-esque attitude. “Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration,” he wrote,

I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my Country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Though Washington was not dying as he penned these words, his demise was little more than three years in the future. This was the last time he would speak to the American people in any official capacity, and he seemed appropriately motivated to beg their indulgence. Ostensibly speaking, this would seem an entirely unnecessary gesture. Notwithstanding the tumult which accompanied the debate on the Jay Treaty (1795), his countrymen never seemed to feel less than an ardent sense of devotion towards the man who they believed had given his all to secure their collective liberty. In spite of his consistent popularity, however, Washington evidently remained convinced that, owing to, “The faults of incompetent abilities[,]” he had quite probably erred in some manner or other over the course of his term in office.

    In consequence, and very humbly begging the pardon of his fellow citizens, Washington asked both that his faults be looked upon as kindly as was possible, and that “the Almighty” do whatever was in his power to lessen the ill effects which might have been caused by the same. As with Addison’s interpretation of Cato, the degree to which the first President of the United States appeared wholly resistant to the concept of pride is really quite striking. Most public servants, speaking from the perspective of the early 21^st century, try to conclude their professional careers by talking up their accomplishments as a way of shaping public memory. Granted, some amount of humility may be necessary so as not to seem unpardonably arrogant, but the general thrust of a parting speech is almost always closer to, “I’m proud of what I did,” than, “Please forgive me for not doing more.” The latter, however, more closely aligns with the mood of Washington’s final farewell. Like Cato at the close of the drama that bears his name, he had served his countrymen for many years and in many different capacities and had finally come to the end of his life as a public figure. And while, unlike Cato, he was not actually dying, he addressed himself to his fellow citizens very much as though he was. “I know I am imperfect,” he essentially said, “And while I always tried to do my best, I am sure that I sometimes came up short. Please forgive me if you can and look upon me kindly in the future.” Truly, for a man of Washington’s fame as of 1796, this was a remarkable way to end a career. Not only was it so like the last moments of Cato to apologize for errors which no one else seemed inclined to point out, but Washington even gave voice to a very similar sense of peace when it came to the notion that he would shortly be parted from the world of the living. It was his hope, he wrote, that, “The faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.” Washington may not have had the assistance of Plato in arriving at this attitude of equanimity, but it seems far from unlikely that he took some solace from the example of Addison’s Cato. He was a man of faith, of course, and had every reason to take comfort in the idea that his soul would yet endure. But the fact that the hero of one of his favorite plays had met death in a mood of stoic calm surely did its part to much the same effect.

    Indeed, it would seem likely that Addison’s Cato had a similar effect on the Revolutionary Generation as a whole to that which it arguably exerted upon the most celebrated member thereof. Simply reading Cato did not transform the fourth son of a moderately successful Virginia planter into George Washington, Father of His Country. There were a great many more factors at work in shaping the man who would become the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States – from his upbringing to his faith, his military experiences, his relationship with his wife, his friendships, and the particulars of his personality – than the morals and the messaging of this one play he happened to like. Just so, while it would seem fair enough to say that Cato was a significant piece of literature to the members of the Founding Generation, and that it may even have served to inspire some of the members thereof to hold fast to their convictions more firmly than they might have otherwise, it would simply not be accurate to claim that Addison’s drama was a particularly important factor in either shaping or instigating the revolutionary American struggle. Perhaps Washington was inspired by Addison’s titular hero and sought to model his behavior on that of Cato as near as he could manage. And perhaps a number of the Founders took encouragement from the selfsame hero’s unshakable sense of resolve whenever they found themselves contemplating the sheer magnitude of the threat that they and their country daily faced. But inspiration and encouragement are not the same as causation. The American Revolution was not the product of Cato’s popularity in the Thirteen Colonies. Rather, the same factors that brought about the Revolution doubtless inclined many of those residing in British America to regard Addison’s most famous drama as an expression of moral reassurance.

    The notion that Cato helped to bolster the American revolutionaries in their struggle against the British Parliament and the British Crown is made all the more fascinating when one recalls that it was written originally with a British audience in mind. Joseph Addison never intended his classical drama to speak to anything more than the specific political context in which he put pen to paper in the first place. He was a Whig, he supported the Hanoverian Succession, he feared the Tories were likely to invite the Stuarts to retake the throne, he wrote a play which he hoped would inspire his fellow Whigs to offer resistance. Subsequent generations, to be sure, expanded its meaning somewhat to encapsulate a more general celebration of British constitutionalism as defined by the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701), but Cato remained a steadfastly British thing. It was written by a British playwright, it championed British values, and it was intended for British audiences. The fact that many of the most prominent American members and supporters of the Continental Congress likewise embraced Cato as something which spoke to their own values and lent significance to their own struggles would accordingly appear to reinforce what has long been a common affirmation in these pages since the first of them was published some seven years ago. The membership of the Founding Generation of the United States of America was able to identify so closely with a piece of British political literature because they did not consider themselves – at the Revolution’s outset, at least – to be anything other than British at heart.

    This changed, of course, as the Revolution went on. American hopes for reconciliation diminished, the strategic significance of independence became apparent, and a sense of “Americanness” began the process of finally and fatefully diverging from existing notions of what it meant to be British. The accompanying loss of affinity on the part of the American revolutionaries for British culture and British values, however, did not necessarily spell the end of Cato’s American popularity. It was true that by the end of the year 1776, the supporters of the Continental Congress could no longer claim – nor indeed attempted to claim – that they were fighting simply to assert their rights as British citizens. The Declaration of Independence had permanently severed ties between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the nascent American republic, and it was now entirely up to the citizens of the former to decide from where their rights were derived and how they might best be defined and protected by the law. This formal separation, however, did not necessarily entail the complete upending of the existing hierarchy of American social, political, and philosophical values. The Revolution, at its heart, was still about asserting the primacy of a set of convictions that had largely been defined by prior generations of British Whig statesman and theorists. Representative government, representative taxation, limited executive authority, the right of due process; all of these principles had been articulated and established by and within the British parliamentary system. And while it may no longer have seemed possible by the summer of 1776 for the sitting British government and the supporters of the Continental Congress to use these concepts as a common ground for reconciliation, that didn’t mean they suddenly ceased to be important to the American revolutionaries and their struggle.

    On the contrary, the values themselves for which the supporters of Congress were fighting seemed to become even more important once they were finally and irrevocably severed from all association with Great Britain and its government. No longer concerned with appealing to some shared sense of philosophical conviction as a means of repairing an unwanted breach, the American revolutionaries instead seemed to take it upon themselves to prove to their British counterparts that the former actually understood them more thoroughly than the latter. “Clearly,” the supporters of Congress effectively concluded, “We understand the rights of Englishmen better than the English. Well, let’s just show them how much better.” This attitude, in a roundabout way, is where the significance of something like Cato comes in again. As written by Addison, Cato, a Tragedy was originally intended to speak to and comment upon the political crisis then unfolding in early 18^th century Britain concerning the Act of Settlement and the pending Hanoverian Succession. As discussed at length in this present series, however, that didn’t mean there weren’t any number of aspects for a late 18^th century American audience to grab hold of as being particularly representative of their own particular trials and tribulations. Indeed, there were arguably a number of ways in which Cato seemed to align more closely with the American revolutionary struggle of the 1770s and 1780s than it did with the Whig/Tory conflicts of the 1700s and 1710s.

    The Whigs, after all, had no Cato figure around which to rally. The Americans had Washington. And there was no foreign prince attached to the early 18^th century Whigs whose loyalty was the product of his love and respect for Whig values and Whig philosophy. But the Americans did have Lafayette. Even the context of the American Revolution more closely matched that which Addison described. The Whigs and the Tories had not come to blows in 1712 over their differing views on who should succeed to the British Crown, and nor would they upon the death of Queen Anne in 1715. But the supporters of Congress were at war with Parliament and the Crown. The revolutionaries were vastly outnumbered and under-resourced, suffered betrayal in their ranks, and often seemed to teeter on the precipice of defeat. Without making any claims as to the supernatural or fantastical, it would indeed have seemed as though Addison had unknowingly predicted the wrong civil war. Writing in 1712, he appeared to believe that some manner of conflict between Whiggism and Toryism was quite probably in the offing and was inclined to help prevent the worst outcome for the former. But while he may have been wrong in the immediate, he was right in the end. It may not have been the British Whigs whose beliefs were threatened, and it may not have been the Hanoverian Succession that served as the catalyst for a civil war, but there would, indeed, come a time not long in the future when the values which underpinned 18^th century British constitutionalism would be threatened by the appeal of order joined with force. And when it did come, those whose liberties were at stake would cleave to Addison’s vision of stoic self-sacrifice as avidly as his fellow Whigs had done some six decades prior. It may not have moved them to act as they did on its own, but Cato, a Tragedy doubtless served as a source of comfort and encouragement to the American revolutionaries who read it, while also functioning as a potent reminder that theirs was a struggle whose significance stretched far beyond their immediate circumstances.

    That’s how I see it, at any rate. You?                 

Cato, a Tragedy, Part XI: Painful Preeminence

    Recalling that there didn’t seem to be any clear equivalent to the character of Cato in the time and place in which Addison wrote and was commenting upon, it would seem to bear come consideration whether or not the late-18^th century American context offered a ready candidate in the same way it seemed to for the figure of prince Juba. To put this thought more clearly in the form of a question, was there an American Cato in the 1770s, and if so, who were they? The answer, as ever, rather depends on who is being asked.

    Statesmen like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin would likely have answered that there was not such figure, though Franklin might privately have fancied that he personally came closest. To these men, the American struggle for independence from Great Britain was not about singular leadership or individual ideals. They had not pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the service of one man, but to each other. And while Franklin, again, may have taken some amount of pride in the fact that he was one of the most famous living Americans, that he had been previously regarded by the British as representative of his countrymen’s values and opinions, and that the French had come to see him as a kind of symbolic avatar of the American struggle, even he would not have called himself the leader of the Revolution. An important voice, perhaps, a man of consequence, but not the leader. The Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, one George Washington, would most definitely have been of like mind with his colleagues in Congress, notwithstanding his position as the most senior officer in the armed forces of the Continental Congress and the maneuvering which he engaged in to maintain that position. Indeed, he would likely have been among the last people to acknowledge the superior qualities and fitness for leadership of any one man, let alone to imagine himself in such a role. Whatever he thought about his own abilities in private, Washington’s public persona was too closely identified with traits like humility, prudence, and restraint for him to ever dream of grasping the role of great man, avatar, or symbol for himself. If such things came to him, so be it. He would ward them off, but not reject them. He was ever at the service of his fellow man, and they could make of him what they would.

    Not everyone supportive of American independence from Great Britain, mind you, was as scrupulous as the gentlemen named above when it came to identifying their chosen cause with the behavior and values of a particular individual. Farmers in the countryside, laborers in the cities, shopkeepers in villages, and merchant sailors at sea all probably needed some kind of singular figure with which to identify their struggles and convictions, being all of them variously educated and not always particularly adept at grasping the often abstract philosophical concepts that Congress was attempting to promote. The idea of the social contract and the right of a free people to revolt – as originated by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1769), refined by John Locke (1632-1704), and deployed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence – was absolutely a key ideological underpinning of the American Revolution, but not everyone living in the Thirteen Colonies was equipped to understand the implications of these concepts without some exemplary living figure around which they could rally. Dry philosophical theory was one thing, relevant though it may be to the situation at hand, but a man who embodies the ideals in question, and who seeks to enact them in his every word and deed with a certain quality of charisma, can go a long way towards encouraging others to follow the same path. Just so, the common soldiers and many of the younger officers then serving in the aforementioned Continental Army were similarly inclined to connect the values for which they were ostensibly fighting with a specific individual in a position of leadership. Doubtless, this was in large part due to the essential nature of military life. Formal hierarchies encourage obedience, shared suffering breeds loyalty, and most command structures vest paramount authority in a single position at the top. As to whom these common folk and common soldiers almost universally identified as their inspiration and their savior – their “Cato,” as it were – the answer is both completely understandable and deeply ironic. It was none other than the aforementioned George Washington.

    The reason that this was such an ironic choice, again, was that it cut directly against the public persona that Washington had long evinced. The master of Mount Vernon would have been among the last people in the world to have read Addison’s Cato – a play of which he was reportedly quite fond and from which he quoted quite often – and identified himself with the titular protagonist. Cato, recall, spend much of the drama that bears his name being spoken about in the most glowing terms imaginable by his colleagues, family, and allies. He is often called great, at least once he is called godlike, and his death is referred to with all sincerity by his surviving son Portius as an unparalleled tragedy. George Washington would never have considered himself worthy of such accolades, nor dreamed that under any circumstances that his countrymen would offer them freely. No doubt he saw in Cato – as Addison surely intended – an inspirational figure whose virtues he would gladly aspire to in all aspects of his life. But a mirror of himself? A presage of things to come? Never. Washington simply wasn’t that guy. This humility, of course, formed a large part of what endeared him to his legions of devotees, and so keenly fitted him to play the role of America’s Cato. By never outwardly seeking after fame, he showed himself to be deserving of just that. But claiming as his fondest wish that he be permitted only to serve his countrymen, he inspired others to render faithful service to him in turn. And by requesting, at long last, nothing more in exchange for his efforts than an obscure and peaceful retirement, he validated his selection as the single-most powerful official in the nascent American republic. Was this self-conscious on Washington’s part? Was he knowingly trying to play the part of Cato in the drama that was the American founding? Quite possibly, it was. Quite possibly, he was.

    Consider, by way of example, some of the things that Cato said over the course of the play which bears his name as compared to some of what was publicly expressed by Washington over the course of his military and political career. When attempting, in Act 2, Scene I, to convince his fellow Senator, Lucius, that the time had not yet come to surrender to the approaching forces of Caesar, for example, Cato famously declared that, “A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty, / Is worth a whole eternity of bondage.” What he meant by this, of course, is that freedom is too precious a thing to dispense with until the last possible moment, and that being robbed of it in the long term is worth cherishing it in the short term. While Washington never expressed himself in quite the same way as Cato, he gave voice to much the same sentiment to fellow Virginia planter George William Fairfax (1724-1787) in a letter dated May 31^st, 1775. “Unhappy it is though to reflect,” the latter therein observed,

That a Brother's Sword has been sheathed in a Brother's breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?”

Though the words may differ, Washington’s meaning is just that of Cato’s. However unpleasant the consequence may ultimately be when one stands fast to defend the liberty that is their birthright, what choice can there be but to defend it? Bloodshed may be the result. Defeat may be the result. But as long as liberty yet retains some hope of survival – for but a day, or even an hour – then, “A whole eternity of bondage” is worth the risk of saving it. Cato and Washington are thus united in their shared conviction – or Washington is united with one his literary heroes –that even the possibility of freedom gives value to the worst kind of suffering.    

   Further similarities arise when one compares the two men’s attitudes towards soldiers under their command who feel as though they have been ill-used. Addressing a group of mutinous legionaries ostensibly pledged to his service in Act 3, Scene II, Cato comes up rather short of being the soul of forgiveness. “Perfidious men!” he laments,  

        And will you thus dishonour

        Your past exploits, and sully all your wars!

        […]

        Behold, ungrateful men,

        Behold my bosom naked to your swords,

        And let the man that’s injured strike the blow.

        Which of you all suspects he is wrong’d

        Or thinks he suffers greater ills than Cato? Am I distinguished from you but by toils,

        Superior toils, and heavier weight of care? / Painful pre-eminence!

The emotions which Cato here gives vent to would seem to be a combination of disappointment and frustration. On one hand, he is troubled that men who have thus far performed their duties faithfully and well – who have acquitted themselves in Cato’s eyes as good soldiers and good citizens of Rome – should decide to besmirch their collective reputation for diligent service by suddenly deciding to act of out purest self-interest. It is, to one such as Addison’s hero, an exceedingly distasteful turn. And on the other hand, having marched, and toiled, and risked death alongside these same men through any number of battles and hardships, Cato is understandably irritated at being accused of having used them to his own advantage. “I have been beside you all along,” he tells them, “Bearing the same adversities as you, and with the additional weight of all of your lives upon my conscience. And you think you have somehow been mistreated? How am I to respond to such ingratitude?”   

    Washington, speaking to the soldiers of the Continental Army encamped at Newburgh, New York in the spring of 1783, expressed a similar mixture of disappointment and frustration when it came to his attention that certain of their number were planning to march on Congress and essentially extort their promised pensions. Granted, his tone was somewhat less heated than Cato’s – nor, for that matter, did he have the accused immediately sentenced to death – but he nevertheless touched on very similar ideas. For example, in light of the services thus far rendered by the membership of the Continental Army, the Commander-in-Chief of the same requested that the alleged conspirators therein, “Not to take any measures which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained [.]” Like Cato, Washington was troubled that men who had thus far rendered good and noble service should be willing to cast aside the honor they had earned over a relatively minor disappointment. Later on in the same address, Washington arguably gave voice to another of Cato’s sentiments when he made a point of reminding the soldiers stationed at Newburgh that he should not have been thought of as unsympathetic to their hardships. “But as I was among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country,” he noted accordingly,

As I have never left your side one moment, but when called from you on public duty [,] As I have been the constant companion and witness of your distresses, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits [,] As I have ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army [,] As my heart has ever expanded with joy, when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen, when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.

Again, though Washington adopted a much softer tone than Cato when presented with a similar set of circumstances, the significance of what he says is essentially the same. Like his literary hero, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army was frustrated – in his own quiet, self-effacing way – that the soldiers under his command should have thought themselves so ill-used by their leaders that they felt the need to separate themselves from the man who had suffered at theirs sides since 1775. “Have I not always been with you?” Washington asks them. “Have I not always kept your interests close to my heart? And this is how you act?”

    There would also seem to be a common subtext to each of the complaints levelled by Cato and Washington, though neither man gave voice to it. The honor of these men was reflected in the behavior of the soldiers under their command. When the soldiers acted selfishly, this cast shame upon those who led them. Cato, who was trying to uphold the integrity of the ancient Roman Constitution against the overawing power at the disposal of one Julius Caesar, was understandably disconcerted when some of the soldiers who had ostensibly pledged themselves to his cause suddenly showed themselves to be as selfish as any conqueror. Likewise, it was entirely justifiable for Washington, who was attempting to secure the independence of the American people from callous British authorities, to be somewhat bothered when the men whose interests he was attempting to promote acted as though their only concern was whether and how much they were paid for their services. What did such behavior on the part of fighting men say about their leaders? Why shouldn’t a given observer have concluded that these men learned their rapaciousness from those who commanded them? Both Cato and Washington had essentially staked their respective reputations – nay, their very lives – on the success of those they led into battle and on the manner in which they conducted themselves. It was thus only natural that the fictionalized Roman statesman and his later American admirer should have reacted as they did. Not only were the relevant mutineers potentially besmirching the cause for which they claimed to fight, but they were calling into question the virtue of the men who led them.     

    The extent to which this sense of personal virtue mattered to the individuals in question provides another point of commonality between the literary Cato and the real-life George Washington. Cato, having been much dismayed by the aforementioned attempted mutiny depicted in Act 3, Scene II, shortly thereafter exhorts all within earshot to,

        Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,

        The gen’rous plan of power delivered down

        From age to age by your renown’d forefathers,

        (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood:)

        Oh, let it never perish in your hands! But piously transmit it to your children.

Having been given, but a moment before, some reason to doubt the sincerity of those who claim to share his convictions, Cato thus attempts to make it plain to all concerned both what it is he values and what it is they should value. The conflict at hand weighs heavily on the opponents of Caesar, to be sure. They’ve lost more battles than they’ve won and have spent untold days and weeks marching across the Libyan desert to an uncertain fate at Utica. But while Cato is not dismissive of these hardships – indeed, he reminds the treacherous soldiers that he has shared in every one of them – he does attempt to contextualize them against the principal cause for which they were endured. “Yes,” he admits,” we have all suffered. “Only remember what we have suffered for.”

Cato, a Tragedy, Part X: “Thou Hast a Roman Soul”

    In as much as there were aspects of Addison’s Cato which the author intended to be taken a certain way and which seemed to come down to later audiences more or less intact, there were also most definitely elements of the drama in question whose reinterpretation by audiences generations after the fact represented an understanding of the moral universe of Cato which its creator almost certainly could not have predicted. Consider, by way of explanation, the character of Prince Juba. As written in 1712, Juba’s personality and behavior very much place him in the same kind of role as that fulfilled by Cato’s various children. He is virtuous, loyal, and very devoted to his chosen patron. And though his aid, Syphax, often attempts to convince him that keeping his flag in Cato’s camp will only ever lead to defeat and humiliation, the young prince never once appears to waver. So, what, then, is his struggle? What is it that he overcomes in order to maintain his allegiance to Cato, as Marcus overcomes his desperate love for Lucia, and Marcia overcomes her own love for the young prince himself? It is not Juba’s affection for Marcia, of course, for this only draws him closer to Cato. Nor is it, as aforementioned, any of the poisonous words poured into his ear by Syphax. No, Juba’s handicap – the flaw which he must surmount in order to demonstrate both his loyalty to Cato and the sheer magnetism of the great man’s ideals – is his race.

    While it never becomes the text of the play in the way that Othello’s race forms one of the central themes of the tragedy which bears his name, the fact that Juba is a prince of Numidia would not have escaped the notice of contemporary British audiences. Numidia, for the record, was an ancient kingdom in Africa in what is now Algeria on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Ruled and populated by the native Berber peoples of the region, it had a long and storied history with its Roman and Carthaginian neighbors, and by the time of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar had been partially annexed into the Roman province of the same name. From the Roman perspective of this era, the Numidians and their kingdom were, to coin a phrase, useful barbarians whose historical position as buffer between Rome and Rome’s inveterate rival Carthage made them valuable as either allies or clients to be called upon in time of war. They were not the equal of Romans, mind you, being of foreign stock and believing in gods and traditions all their own, but nor were they seen as wholly unredeemable. From the perspective of early 18^th century Britain, of course, these kinds of strategic considerations would have mattered less than the simple fact that the Numidians were a native people of Africa. Their descendants were not among those most commonly enslaved and sold by contemporary British traders, to be sure, ancient Numidia then falling within the boundaries of a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. But while a British audience, in consequence, might not have thought of a slave when confronted with a character like Prince Juba, they would most definitely have had every reason to think him a savage.

    There is nothing in the least bit savage about Addison’s portrayal of Juba, as it happens. He is, as aforementioned, supremely devoted to both Cato and his daughter, Marcia, and utterly unmoved by whatever adversities he may face as a result. What makes this remarkable, however – to the point that Cato often makes reference to it himself – is that Juba is not a Roman. To be sure, he is never treated by the Roman characters in the play as though he is either lacking in understanding or morally deficient. He is spoken to, by and large, frankly, plainly, and un-condescendingly. But his otherness does nevertheless occasionally enter into the conversation. In some cases it feels like something of a glancing blow, like when Cato responds to Juba’s suggestion that the group encamped at Utica flee deeper into Africa in search of allies against Caesar by brining up the ignominious fate of another African prince. “Canst thou think,” the great man replies,

            Cato will fly before the sword of Caesar?

            Reduced, like Hannibal, to seek relief

            From court to court, and wander up and down

            A vagabond in Afric?

The individual to which Cato refers is the famed Hannibal, son of Hamilcar (247-181 BC), a general and statesmen of ancient Carthage who famously led an audacious invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) and dealt the Romans a series of humiliating defeats. Defeated himself at the climactic Battle of Zama (202 BC), he spent the waning years of his life in exile providing military aide to Rome’s various rivals in Asia Minor before finally committing suicide in order to avoid imprisonment.

    Hannibal, in his day, was one of Rome’s most formidable enemies, and a strategist and tactician almost without equal. And while Juba’s native Numidia had a similarly complicated relationship with Hannibal’s Carthage, the young prince nevertheless could not have failed to understand the significance of Hannibal’s victories in terms of the perceptions of ancient Africa harbored by contemporary Europeans like the Romans. Hannibal was proof positive that Rome was not untouchable among ancient Mediterranean civilizations, and that peoples other than the Romans could be similarly formidable in war. But this is not the idea which Cato seeks to evoke. He makes reference to the defeated Hannibal rather than the victorious Hannibal, the Hannibal of exile, and shame, and ignominious death. And he says to Juba, who is himself a prince of Africa, that he, Cato, could never do such a thing. Wandering around and begging shelter from foreigners may have been fit enough for an African like Hannibal, but it would not do for a Roman like Cato. That Cato says this Juba – again, a native African – would seem to drive home the intended subtext. “That sort of thing,” he seems to be saying, “May be alright for people like you, but I could never bring myself to behave in such a way.” It is, again, something of a glancing blow, but one which is nonetheless aimed at Juba’s status as something other. He is a noble young man, as Cato more than once remarks, and one who he is glad to call a friend. But sometimes he gives cause for his foreign-ness to be remarked upon. Sometimes, that is, he makes it hard to forget he isn’t Roman.

    Addison attempts to drive this point home in other ways – that Juba isn’t a product of the same world and the same culture as Cato and his fellow Romans – particularly by pairing Juba with his nominal aide-de-camp, Syphax. Being, like his co-conspirator Sempronius, an inveterate schemer and dissembler, Syphax makes a concerted effort during their most significant exchange in Act 2 to remind Juba that Juba isn’t Roman, that he has no business getting involved in Roman affairs, and that he is better off going back to Numidia to claim his father’s kingdom. “Alas, my prince,” he begins,

            How are you changed of late!

            I’ve known young Juba rise before the sun,

            To beat the thicket where the tiger slept,

            Or seek the lion on his dreadful haunts.

In spite of Juba’s plea that Syphax cease his entreaties, the courtier presses on. “How the old king would smile,” he continues, conjuring the image of Juba’s departed father

            To see you weigh the paws, when tipp’d with gold,

            And throw the shaggy spoils about your shoulders.

Part of what Syphax is trying to do, of course, is remind Juba that he comes from a different world than the Romans whose company he lately desires to keep. They are statesmen, and philosophers, and urbanites wholly accustomed to comfort and luxury. Juba, by contrast, is a prince of the Numidians who once spent his days hunting lions and carrying the trophies home to his father. Why is he wasting his time with these people? Why, if he desires the hand of Marcia, does he not mount his fleetest horse and simply snatch her up? Juba will have none of this – “Would thou seduce my youth / To do an act that would destroy mine honour?” he retorts – but the point had already been made. The young man may indeed be as virtuous as he seems, but this is in spite of the wildness – to a Roman, the barbarity – of the culture in which he was raised. 

    The significance of Juba having surmounted his own heritage is made clearer still in later scenes. Near the beginning of Act 4, Scene II, for example, Juba appears before Cato to express his shame over the behavior of Syphax. The duplicitous courtier having lately attempted to flee from Utica, Juba feels as though he bears responsibility and presents himself to the great man for judgement. When Cato asks what crime Juba is so eager to atone for, Juba answers simply, “I’m a Numidian.” This, and Cato’s response – “And a brave one, too. Thou hast a Roman soul” – are extremely telling as to the kind of character Addison intends the young prince to be. When one of his countrymen acts in a dishonorable fashion, he believes the resulting guilt is his to bear. “I’m a Numidian [,]” he says, as if there was already cause to suspect that such people were not to be trusted. Indeed, Cato must remind his young friend that this is not the case, that, “Falsehood and fraud shoot up in ev’ry soil, / The product of all climes [.]” That fact that Cato also, mere moments before, declared that Juba has “a Roman soul” would nevertheless seem to accentuate rather than ameliorate the significance of the misconception he is attempting to dismiss. Cato does not feel responsible for Caesar, though Caesar is a fellow Roman, because Cato is wise enough to understand that culture is no guarantee of goodness or falsehood. Juba himself would seem to be proof of that, being a Numidian with the “soul of a Roman,” though this in itself is something of a backhanded compliment. In order for Juba to be worthwhile in Cato’s eyes, his essence must be like that of a Roman. He couldn’t just be the Numidian that he is, for Numidia is not the equal of Rome. No, what is remarkable about Juba – as far as Cato is concerned – is that he has almost completely transcended his Numidian origins and embraced the soul of civilization. That is, he has embraced what it truly means to be Roman. He falls short sometimes – by making distasteful suggestions or feeling shame when it isn’t necessary – but his soul is where it ought to be.

    Later still, as Cato lays dying in the final scene of the play, his attempt to express his last hopes to his friends and children once more draws attention to what both he and Addison find so remarkable about Juba. Calling forth his daughter, Cato struggles to remark,

           Juba loves thee, Marcia—

            A Senator of Rome, while Rome survived,

            Would not have match’d his daughter with a king—

            But Caesar’s arms have thrown down all distinction—

There are, it would seem, a few different things being communicated in this relatively brief passage. First, and least problematic, Cato is giving his dying blessing to Marcia and Juba to pursue the love he has observed between them. Second, he is taking the last possible opportunity to express the disdain Romans typically held during the era of the Republic for any form of government – and, by extension, any sort of culture – other than their own. And third, he is using the circumstances of the chaos that Caesar has wrought to dismiss the latter in service of the former. Normally, he is essentially saying, he would never lower himself to match his daughter with a foreign prince. But the world had been turned so completely on its head, and Juba has shown that he is close enough to a Roman in spirit, that Cato will deign to bless their relationship with what little energy he has left. Make no mistake, neither Juba nor Marcia could ask for much more. All the same, the manner in which Cato chooses to fulfil their fondest wish also seems calculated to emphasize how unnatural the match is on its face. A Senator’s daughter and a Numidian prince? Yes, indeed, it is highly irregular. But he’s a good lad. Almost Roman, you might say. And these are strange times.

    Notwithstanding the racialized undertones to the way Addison chooses to depict the character of Juba, there doesn’t seem to be any parallel figure within the contemporary British political/cultural sphere which the Numidian prince was explicitly intended to represent. He was a foreigner, it’s true, and so were the Hanoverians, but it wasn’t as though they were under any obligation to prove their fealty to Whig ideals. So long as the Act of Settlement (1701) was successfully enacted, Sophia and her son George were going to ascend to the throne. All that needed to qualify them was their adherence to some manner of Protestant Christianity. No, it’s safe to say that Juba wasn’t intended to be a Hanoverian stand-in. Rather, along with Marcus, Portius, and Marcia, he is yet another avatar of Whig devotion and virtue. The fact that he is not Roman – indeed, that he is a native African – is just another way for Addison to demonstrate the ability of Cato’s noble influence to raise flawed, faltering people up above their own weaknesses. It just happens to be the most visceral means of doing just that which Addison chooses to deploy. The obsessiveness of Marcus and the lovesickness of Portius and Marcia are understandable enough, to be sure, but the fact of Juba’s race would surely have been that much more striking to early 18^th century British audiences. Cato’s influence is so powerful as to cause this boy – this savage who once hunted lions on the Libyan plain – to cast off his failings and embrace the cause of virtue and civilization? If such things are possible, he must surely be in the right. If Cato can convert a savage simply by shining upon them with his presence, then his beliefs must truly be worth dying for. 

    Transposed onto the American context of the 1760s and 1770s, Juba’s race would naturally seem to take on a rather more complicated aspect. Juba, recall, being of what we would now think of as Berber stock, was a native inhabitant of continental North Africa. And while, to see him, he would not have resembled the African natives to which most contemporary Americans were familiar, the fact of his origin is what it is. Africa, as far as they were concerned, was the savage continent from which they imported their slaves. So, what, then did that make Juba? What would an audience in, say, colonial Virginia make of the notion of an African prince being treated as nearly an equal to a cast of Europeans? Indeed, being matched with the daughter of a Roman statesman? The likeliest answer, upon cursory reflection, would seem to be that they would not have made anything of it at all. The play takes place in Roman antiquity, race relations as they existed in 18^th century North America don’t apply, don’t think about it, don’t draw any conclusions, just put the whole thing out of your mind. Juba is a Numidian, yes? That may well have made him a native of Africa, technically speaking, but not necessarily an African in the contemporary parlance. That is to say, he wouldn’t have been of the same ethnic origin as those inhabitants of Africa whom most Americans then considered to be fundamentally inferior. And Addison doesn’t seem inclined to treat his as anything other than a stand-in for his fellow Whigs. So, why not let that be all that Juba represents? To do otherwise would be…problematic. And if 18^th century Americans were good at nothing else, they were at the very least highly adept at compartmentalizing things that might otherwise prove problematic.

    None of this is to say, mind you, that Juba wouldn’t have stood out to American audiences, particularly in the 1770s. His race may have been too fraught to pay any mind, but his foreignness would doubtless have drawn a certain amount of attention. An outsider so moved by ideals not his own that he offers to risk his life to defend them? A person raised to accept arbitrary rule who eventually comes to embrace the values of republicanism? The United States of America, in the throes of the Revolutionary War, was not a stranger to individuals such as this. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Continental Congressmen-cum-diplomat Silas Deane (1738-1789) and French polymath and revolutionary Pierre Beaumarchais (1732-1799), a number of European professional soldiers agreed to serve in the Continental Army, most of whom arrived to take up their posts at some point over the course of 1777. Some, like the Frenchman Johann de Kalb (1721-1780), the Polish Casimir Pulaski (1745-1779), and the Prussian Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730-1794), were experienced officers who chose the mercenary life in an effort to escape from an unfortunate turn of luck in Europe or because Deane – on his own recognizance – had offered them promotion and preferment. Others, like the French aristocrat Gilbert du Motier (1757-1834) and the Polish revolutionary Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817), were sincerely inspired by the aims of the American rebels and wished to aid in the realization of their ideals. Of this latter group, du Motier – more commonly known as the Marquis de Lafayette – would likely have appeared most similar to prince Juba in the eyes of American readers of Cato seeking to draw parallels between the events of that play and the struggle unfolding around them. He was young, after all, and idealistic, and enjoyed a close personal bond with the nominal leader of the American cause.

    There were some important differences between Juba and Lafayette, it bears mentioning. Juba’s connection to Cato and his family, for one, was the result of his departed father’s previous friendship with the great man in question and his death in service of their shared ideals. While this is only partially correct – Juba’s father in actual fact having been an ally of Pompey rather than Cato – the idea that the young prince came to the cause of the Optimates as the result of a family connection is true enough. And for another, Juba’s devotion to Cato, in Addison’s telling, is very much tied up with his love for Cato’s daughter, Marcia. Lafayette, by comparison, was drawn to the American cause very much for its own sake. A young man in the 1770s who had only just gained a commission in a French regiment of dragoons, the young noble first became aware of the nascent rebellion in British America in 1775 at an officer’s dinner in Metz shortly before he turned eighteen. Likely still bearing something of a grudge over the death of his father, Michel du Motier (1731-1759), at the hands of the British at the Battle of Minden (1759), and perhaps moved by his recent initiation into Freemasonry to attach a great deal of importance to things like honor and liberty, Lafayette quickly became convinced that the American struggle was very much his own and set himself to the task of gaining a commission in the Continental Army. The aforementioned Silas Deane helped to facilitate this ambition, granting the young man the rank of major general and providing him with a letter recommendation and introduction. And while both Lafayette’s father-in-law and the government of Louis XVI conspired to keep him from making the journey across the Atlantic – French officers, prior to the sealing of an alliance between the United States and France, being forbidden to serve in the Continental Army – he was ultimately able to charter a ship and set sail in the early spring of 1777.              

    It was Lafayette’s experience in America, of course, that arguably cast him as the prince Juba of the American Revolution. Upon having his commission as a major general in the Continental Army confirmed by Congress in July of 1777, Lafayette was shortly thereafter introduced to his commanding officer, George Washington, and the two quickly developed a close and enduring rapport. The young nobleman was reportedly in awe of Washington, and gladly accepted his offer of friendship and tutelage. To that end, when the famously humble Commander-in-Chief attempted to apologize for what he believed to be the embarrassing state of his encampment during a tour of the same shortly after their first meeting, Lafayette was said to respond, “I am here to learn, not to teach.” He went on to serve bravely, in spite of his inexperience, at Brandywine (1777), earning Washington’s plaudits; at Valley Forge (1777-1778), where he suffered resolutely alongside his beloved mentor; and at Barren Hill (1778), where he narrowly avoided British capture. And while Washington had no daughters for the young Frenchman to fall deeply and irreversibly in love with, he was nonetheless warmly embraced by his commander as a kind of surrogate son. The two were not always in complete agreement on matters of military strategy. Indeed, Washington was often given to chide the younger man – as he did with the likes of Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) and John Laurens (1754-1782) – when he made foolish suggestions or seemed overly concerned with seeking after military glory. But Lafayette was never less than wholly devoted to his American patron, and Washington in turn came to trust him implicitly.

    What made this such an interesting development – and what speaks to the similarities between prince Juba and the young marquis – is that Lafayette was a born aristocrat who had been raised in the famously decadent atmosphere of late 18^th century monarchical France. There was no reason in particular that a man of his breeding and experience should have identified in the slightest with the struggle of a foreign people in some colony half a world away. On the contrary, as a man possessed of inherited wealth and social privilege who was engaged in military service to a government possessed of many colonies of its own, he should have been on the side of Parliament and the Crown. His place in the world depended on maintaining a status quo that had not changed for centuries. And while the events of an insurrection in the colony of a rival European power might not seem all that relevant on the surface to the relative stability of late 18^th century France, successful revolutions tend to have unpredictable ripple effects on the wider world. Notwithstanding all of the factors which conceivably should have led Lafayette down the path of reactionary traditionalism, however, he instead chose to risk his life in foreign climes and for a distinctly revolutionary cause. Partly, as aforementioned, there were personal reasons very likely behind this turn. And it ought not to be dismissed that the Marquis de Lafayette was a very young, idealistic man with a rather romantic turn of mind. But it may also have been the case – in spite of the mercenary attitudes of those like de Kalb and Pulaski – that the ideals for which the American revolutionaries were fighting were just that powerful. Powerful enough to make a stranger into an ally. Powerful enough to turn a soldier sworn to defend one king into a man willing to die to cast off the rule of another.

    Prince Juba, recall, was in much the same position as the young marquis. Not only was he raised in a culture quite foreign to that of Rome and its inhabitants, but he was also a prince, placing him near the pinnacle of a form of government that the ancient Romans had long ago taught themselves to instinctively disdain. His family, it was true, had been an ally of Rome since the general and statesman Pompey had helped restore his grandfather Hiempsal to the Numidian throne in 81 BC. And his father, also called Juba, had willingly joined with the Optimates when their aforementioned defeat at Pharsalus forced them to seek refuge from Caesar in Africa. But the elder Juba was then defeated at Thapsus and made a suicide pact with one of his Roman compatriots, Marcus Petreius (110-46 BC). Granted, it may have been the case that the younger Juba saw this as cause enough for seeking revenge on the forces of Caesar, or that he believed continued loyalty to the Optimates constituted a kind of filial obligation. But it seems just as likely that he should have viewed his father’s death as the consummation of his family’s debt to Rome. Pompey had given Hiempsal back his throne, Hiempsal’s son had given his life for Pompey’s allies. Why should the young prince Juba have taken matters any further than that? Why should he have risked his own life for the cause that had already claimed the life of his father? Under the circumstances, the phrase “good money after bad” come to mind. And yet, as history and Addison both record, this is exactly what Juba did. Perhaps he made this choice out of respect for his departed father. As Addison writes it, it was that he was passionately in love with Marcia. But maybe it was something less material than either. Maybe, having been exposed to the otherwise foreign ideals of men like Cato, Juba was inspired to the point that he was willing to die to defend them.

    The ability of a contemporary American audience to draw the kind of comparison suggested above would doubtless have been aided by a kind of collective desire to see their own trials reflected in the noble struggle of Joseph Addison’s tragic hero. If Lafayette was indeed a latter-day prince Juba – young, idealistic, virtuous, and loyal – then perhaps their story and that of Cato the Younger really were one and the same. Perhaps the values for which they toiled really were magnetic enough to draw the assistance of foreign nobles otherwise alien to the notion that people were entitled to decide for themselves how and by whom they were governed. Perhaps the American fight for independence from Great Britain really was about something more than heavy-handed tax policies and political norms. Weren’t they struggling for the same things as Cato? For justice, and liberty, and a government in the hands of the people? To be sure, Addison changed some of the details in his version of the story, but wasn’t the core of it demonstrably true? Cato did take up arms against the tyranny of Caesar. He did lead his supporters to exile in the North African desert rather than surrender. And when the fight was finally, irrevocably lost, he did take his own life rather than admit of the tyrant’s right to save or condemn it. Weren’t these the kinds of things that America was then facing? There was no desert, mind you, and no figure in opposition quite like Julius Caesar. But there were traitorous dissemblers like Sempronius, and foreign volunteers like Juba, and above all the same Caesar-like threat of overwhelming military and political force. If all that was true, then what else could the American struggle for independence be but a continuation of the struggle of the tragic figure of Cato? A continuation, yes, and a chance to set things right. To do justice to Cato and the ideals for which he’d rather die for than abjure. To strike at Caesar from across the centuries.  

Cato, a Tragedy, Part IX: “His Baffled Arms, and Ruin’d Cause, Are Bars to My Ambition”

    One of the implications of identifying the American cause circa 1775 with that of Addison’s titular hero, Cato, of course, is that Cato’s adversaries are then necessarily cast in the role of the various adversaries of the Continental Congress. George III, for example, could conceivably be thought of as a kind of ersatz Julius Caesar. Granted, the reigning British monarch was not then attempting to overthrow the established constitutional order for the purpose of enlarging the authority at his disposal. On the contrary, the mere fact of his authority was indisputable and undisputed. But George III, like Caesar at the time that Addison’s Cato takes place, did have a great deal of power at his disposal, both direct and indirect. The British Army and the Royal Navy were at his command, Parliament had proven itself entirely willing to affirm his various prerogatives, and the customs of the British style of constitutional government still lent him a significant amount of executive discretion.

    Even just in terms of the patronage he wielded – the offices he could bestow, the titles he could grant, etc. – George III held a tremendous amount of influence over what transpired – or could conceivably transpire – within the confines of the British Empire. In that sense, while he bore little resemblance to Caesar in terms of his motivations or his relationship to the mechanisms and institutions of the state, George III nevertheless presented a very Caesar-like threat. Notwithstanding what his American subjects thought about how he made use of his prerogatives, or the things the British Army and the Royal Navy did in his name, it would have required a significant effort of will for a contemporary inhabitant of the Thirteen Colonies to confront the totality of what George III had at his command and still affirm that their nominal liege had committed a grave error. As Decius said to Cato during their meeting in Act II, “Rome and her senators submit to Caesar, / Her gen’rals and her consuls are no more, / Who check’d his conquests, and denied his triumphs.” Just as easily, it seems, a supporter of the Crown could have said to a supporter of Congress in 1775 that the entire Empire was at the disposal of King George III, with its armed forces awaiting his orders and Parliament in close agreement as to what must be done. Against all this, who were the rebellious colonists? What hope possible hope could they have of success? And why, given their circumstances, did they not just give in?

    The Continental Congress did not enjoy the support of every single inhabitant of the Thirteen Colonies, of course. In addition to those who generally wanted no part of the dispute that had arisen between certain individuals in British America and the British Parliament and Crown – amounting to roughly one-third of the total population – there were also those who explicitly agreed with the justifications put forward by the government of Lord North and felt that those of their neighbors who offered resistance to British authority were indeed some species of traitor or criminal. The presence of these people, known broadly as Loyalists, speaks to the truly internecine nature of the American Revolution. Loyalists raised local American regiments and joined existing British regiments for the purpose of serving the Crown, willingly submitted their communities to British military control, and generally made it that much more difficult for the forces at the command of Congress to operate safely in certain regions of the Thirteen Colonies. Their motivations naturally varied. Some were driven by a desire for official preferment. Others sought to serve out of a genuine sense of loyalty to the Crown. But the American revolutionaries tended to treat them all the same. Loyalists, to those who had cast their lot with Congress, were but lackeys and lickspittles who instinctively crawled towards the seat of power and to beg for cast-off morsels. Had Congress seemed the safer bet, they would have acclaimed themselves good Patriots. Fundamentally selfish and pitifully ambitious, they simply could not be trusted.

    From the perspective of the Continental Congress and its various military and civilian supporters, the figure who doubtless came to epitomize this archetype was none other than Benedict Arnold (1741-1801). A Connecticut-born merchant and an early supporter of the Revolution whose military exploits during the opening stages of the War of Independence gained him the personal respect of George Washington (1732-1799), Arnold’s later betrayal of the American cause and service to the British Crown thereafter caused him to go down as one of the most notorious traitors in the history of the American republic. The reason for this, beyond the mere fact of having switched sides in the middle of a war for national liberation, was that Arnold’s reasons for behaving as he did – as far as they are known – were so remarkably petty. Having served with distinction at the Siege of Boston (1775/76), led the stunningly successful capture of Fort Ticonderoga (1775), and commanded half the forces detailed for the ambitious but ill-fated Quebec Expedition, Arnold evidently came to believe, as the year 1776 gave way to 1777, that he was entitled to greater recognition than Congress seemed willing to give him. Often, he found himself in disputes with other officers whom he felt did not respect his command. Just as often, he haggled with members of Congress over promotions which he felt he deserved. More than once he attempted to resign, and every time Washington refused to comply and then spoke to Congress on his behalf.

    At Saratoga, in October of 1777, Arnold served valiantly and well, sustaining serious wounds to one of his legs and enjoying the thanks of Congress as a result. Convinced that his subsequent elevation was the result of sympathy rather than respect, however, he determined to hold fast to his mounting sense of bitterness. In 1778, in the summer, he was given command of the recently liberated city of Philadelphia, and subsequently became embroiled in yet another series of disputes with local merchants and politicians. The following April, in 1779, Arnold married the young daughter of a local Tory-leaning merchant. And in May, the very next month, he had word sent to the British commander in New York, Sir Henry Clinton (1730-1795), that he was willing to offer his services, in whatever capacity, to the Crown. While this might seem like a rather sudden turn for someone who had willingly served the cause of Congress and the colonies since almost the moment shots were first exchanged at Lexington and Concord in April, 1775, a moment’s reflection on Arnold’s personality and career in fact makes plain the consistency of his actions throughout the period in question.

    A merchant, as aforementioned, with business interests in his native Connecticut, British Quebec, and the West Indies, his reaction to the passage of the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765) was very much that of a man of his vocation. Having pegged his livelihood to the ability of the ships he owned to transport goods freely between certain of Great Britain’s colonial possessions, he naturally rankled at the imposition of imposts and duties which threatened to cut into his profits. Not only that, but there seemed to be something in the heavy-handed enforcement regime that followed which did not sit well with Arnold’s sense of pride. He was an arrogant man by nature, easily offended and easily driven to jealousy, and the notion that officials half-a-world away should be permitted to tell him were to unload his goods and demand a fee on his cargoes for their trouble sorted quite poorly with his rather delicate ego. That he shortly thereafter joined the Sons of Liberty and began openly evading the relevant commercial regulations speaks to a consequent need on his part to push back against those whom he felt had wronged him. When his pride was wounded again after his military service in Quebec and the slights which he felt had been dealt him as a result, he reacted in much the same way by engaging in disputes and cultivating resentments. When he felt that Congress had knowingly passed him over for promotion, he complained, sought the opportunity to plead his case, and threatened to resign. And when he was wounded for a second time at Saratoga – his leg having earlier been shattered during the disastrous Battle of Quebec (1775) – and viewing his subsequent elevation as a gesture of pity, he once again funneled his sense of resentment into plans for making good. In this case, at first, making good meant using his position as military governor of Philadelphia to reassert his reputation as one of America’s preeminent businessmen. But when this venture, too, failed to live up to his expectations, he turned at last to the notion of trading allegiances. He had gotten involved in the struggle against Parliament and the Crown, after all, because he felt it would be in the interests of both his livelihood and his reputation. And while he had served with no small amount of distinction in numerous significant engagements, what had he really gained as a result? Slights upon his honor. Severe injury. Ingratitude. Disrespect. Congress, it seemed, could not give him what he wanted – nay, what he deserved. If His Majesty could, then so much the better.      

    Now, granting that the above may appear to be something of a digression from the topic at hand, one should accordingly attempt to recall the role which the character Sempronius played in Addison’s little drama. Is he not one of the protagonist’s countrymen whose support gives way to betrayal as a result of arrogance and ambition? For that matter, does Addison not given his audience ample reason to believe that the presence of Sempronius in Utica to begin with is less the result of loyalty and virtue than a degree of miscalculation? Sempronius seemed to believe, at the outset, that the safer bet was to side with the Optimates against Caesar. Perhaps he felt their eventual success to be likely. Or perhaps, as he admits more than once, his desire for Cato’s daughter, Marcia, gave ruin to his sense of reason. Having been refused, however, by Marcia, and viewing Cato’s, “Baffled arms, and ruin’d cause,” as “Bars to [his] ambition [,]” his thoughts have turned – like the aforementioned Arnold – to a change of allegiance. “Caesar’s favor,” he thus avows,

That show’rs down greatness on his friends, will raise me

To Rome’s first honours. If I give up Cato,

I claim, in my reward, his captive daughter.

While Addison could not possibly have meant it so, the parallels between his portrayal of frustrated ambition and the opinions which supporters of Congress tended to harbor for their Loyalist opponents during the Revolutionary War is nevertheless quite striking. What is Sempronius if not an ancient Roman Loyalist? Not, mind you, in the sense that he prefers the status quo to some alteration thereof. In that sense, George III and Caesar are rather on opposite ends of the spectrum. But in as much as Sempronius has decided that power is preferable to principle, he would seem to conform rather closely to the American Patriot perception of contemporary Loyalism and its adherents.

    Indeed, he rather seems a close echo of Benedict Arnold himself. Again, this could not have been the case, strictly speaking. Arnold’s betrayal of the American cause took place some sixty years after Addison died in 1719. All the same, the two men – one real (Arnold), one fictional (Sempronius) – seemed to follow a vary similar path. Both of them, despite their fundamentally mercurial nature, were well-regarded by the leaders of the factions with which the initially identified. Cato, until the moment he hears of the treachery and death of Sempronius, never fails to address him as anything less than an erstwhile friend and colleague to whom the most sensitive errands – like, say, the disposal of a band of mutinous soldiers – may safely be entrusted. And Washington, though hardly aloof from the factionalism and infighting which arguably became one of the hallmarks of the officer ranks of the Continental Army, often came to Arnold’s defense whenever the latter complained that his service had not been adequately recognized by Congress. Ironically enough, Washington even once praised Arnold for his actions in Quebec by way of a paraphrase from Addison’s Cato. “It is not in the power of any man to command success [,]” the Commander-in-Chief thus wrote to his subordinate in 1775, “But you have done more—you have deserved it” While the original quotation is delivered by Cato’s son, Portius, rather than the great man himself, it is fittingly directed at the traitorous Sempronius.

    Another point of commonality between the primary villain of Addison’s drama and one of the prototypical villains of the entire Revolutionary era is the manner in which they each sought to change their respective allegiances. Sempronius, having decided that continuing his association with Cato no longer suits his purpose, endeavors to contact Caesar in secret and make plain his intention to defect as soon as possible. His offer in exchange for Caesar’s embrace? Utica, Cato, Juba; the lot. For the latter, the Numidian prince, Sempronius envisions a particularly cruel fate. “He’ll make a pretty figure in a triumph,” he remarks to his co-conspirator, Syphax, “And serve to trip before the victor’s chariot.” The “triumph” in question was a kind of celebratory parade granted to certain military figures in the ancient Roman Republic as a mark of their success, and which invariably involved displays of plunder and captured slaves. Sempronius thus seems to view at least some of those who stand in his way as little better than ornaments of his preferred patron’s eventual victory. While Arnold, for his part, did not go quite so far as this, he nevertheless adopted a similar tack when he finally determined to throw in his lot with the British Crown. First, as Sempronius sought to accomplish via the cooperation of the messenger, Decius, Arnold made use of his personal connections – or, more specifically, the connections furnished by his Tory-leaning wife, Peggy Shippen (1760-1804) – to reach out to British forces in New York in order to make known his desire to render service. Then, once a connection had been established, Arnold attempted to negotiate an exchange for his defection. Having played his hand carefully, maintaining good relations with Washington and gaining a valuable posting for himself at a key defensive point on the Hudson River, he was accordingly able to offer British General Clinton the American fortress at West Point. While the resulting plot was ultimately foiled – thanks in large part to the capture of Arnold’s “handler,” British Major John André (1751-1780) – Arnold was nevertheless rewarded for his efforts with a commission as a brigadier general in the British Army, a lump sum of six thousand pounds, and an annual pension of three hundred and sixty pounds.

    Prior to the exposure of Arnold’s treachery in the autumn of 1780, mind you, there was still ample reason for an American audience to see in the character of Sempronius an accurate reflection of contemporary Patriot attitudes towards the Loyalists and their motives. Loyalists, as far as the supporters of Congress were concerned, were self-serving, greedy, and ambitious, and pursued service to the Crown only as a means to protect or to improve their personal fortunes. Some were colonial officials whose professional success plainly depended on maintaining positive relationships with Parliament and the Crown. Others were merchants in places like New York, or Philadelphia, or Charleston who were bound to view conflict between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain proper as disruptive to their livelihoods. And others still were Anglican clergymen who understood their position as tending to preclude rebellion against the same monarch who was also Supreme Governor of the Church of England. But while each of these represents perfectly explicable perspectives on the prospect of taking up arms against one’s own nominal countrymen, those who came to support the cause of resistance – and eventually independence – were not inclined to be all that understanding. In their eyes, Loyalists were willing to sacrifice the lives and liberties of others for personal comfort, professional advancement, and profit. Is this not Sempronius to the letter?

    To be sure, Addison’s villain did not accurately reflect the true intentions and motivations of the American colonists in the 1770s who chose to remain loyal to the Crown and Parliament. But neither, for that matter, did he very accurately represent the Tories of Addison’s own era whose principles the playwright opposed with such vehemence. In both cases, Sempronius embodied emotional truth rather than factual truth. Audiences were supposed to see in him a reflection of what they felt, or believed, or suspected, rather than what they knew. And while Addison could not possibly have envisioned that his rapacious, duplicitous, self-serving pastiche of early 18^th century Tory behavior would decades later come to stand in for another political community’s views on their distrusted opposition, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that this is indeed what came to pass. Not only were the Whigs and the Tories still the primary political divisions in the Anglo-American world as of the 1760s and 1770s, but the respective supporters of Congress and the Crown in the contemporary Thirteen Colonies grounded their central dispute along much the same lines.

    The Tories, in Addison’s day, believed that the British Crown was not something which Parliament ought to trifle with, and that – up to a point – its traditional prerogatives ought to have been respected. Just so, while the issue at hand was of a different origin altogether, the American Loyalists of the 1770s adopted a very similar attitude. Notwithstanding the injustice of the taxation scheme which successive British governments had attempted to enforce – a point which many people who came to oppose the Revolution initially admitted – Loyalists tended toward the position that radical opposition to the authority of Parliament was impossible to justify. Precedent, they felt, demanded submission to Parliament, whether one agreed with its decisions or not. To claim otherwise – in light of the tradition of Parliamentary supremacy and the resources at the disposal of the same – was purest foolishness. The result was an attitude much like that of the Tories of the 1710s – i.e. submission to authority, aversion to reform, faith in tradition, etc. – among a very similar group of people. Granted, there were no landed gentry in America – no Tory magnates seeking after ennoblements – but the essential character of the two groups was still broadly the same. Loyalists, like Tories, tended to be wealthy, connected, and own substantial properties. And Loyalists, like Tories, tended to identify very closely with the supremacy of the Church of England. Were the Whigs in Addison’s day all that much different? No, in truth, they were not. But for the supporters of the Continental Congress in the 1770s, the Whigs were heroic figures, virtuous and inspirational. They accordingly declared themselves to be American Whigs, heralded figures like William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778), and proudly claimed to be the inheritors of the traditions laid down by those who had previously supported the Hanoverian succession. It is no wonder, then, that Cato appealed to them, and that a figure like Sempronius seemed so familiar. Cato was their story, just as much as it had been the story a succession crisis some sixty years prior. This most certainly could not have been intended, but it most certainly was the case.