Opinion: History and the peaceful transfer of power

In 1839, from the confines of the Clay County Jail in Liberty, Missouri, Joseph Smith, the founding leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taught his flock a sobering lesson about power: “It is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion,” Smith cautioned .

Smith alerted his followers to beware of those “who aspire after their own aggrandizement and seek their own opulence” while others “are groaning in poverty.” He asked Latter-day Saints, even as they were in the midst of being expelled from Missouri under a state-sanctioned extermination order, to “bear the infirmities of the weak” and to do so “with all long suffering.”

Smith spoke specifically of religious authority, but his message applies equally to political authority. When those in power, himself included, “undertake to cover our sins or gratify our pride or vain ambition or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves,” Smith warned. Such a person is left to “kick against the pricks” and “to fight against God.”

Power, in Smith’s estimation, should only be maintained by “persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and meekness and by love unfeigned.” Such ideals seem foreign to politics in our day, but that is all the more reason to consider their implications.

Smith was not the first to express concern over human proclivities toward the abuses of power. In fact, two members of the nation’s founding generation preached weighty sermons on the subject through their actions, more so than through their words.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, did something unthinkable: He gave up power. He resigned his military commission to the new nation’s political authority, the Continental Congress. It was a move made even more remarkable by the fact that Congress had left Washington’s ragtag army perpetually underfunded and ill-equipped. Yet, Washington never wielded his sword against Congress; instead, he turned his sword over to Congress after securing victory. Washington thus indicated that military power was subject to civil authority, not the other way around.

It was a profound lesson in power and one that ensured Washington’s legacy. American painter John Trumbull, who was then visiting London, wrote to his brother after hearing news of Washington’s resignation. Such an act, Trumbull said, “excites the astonishment and admiration of this part of the world,” especially because the typical pattern in world history was for those in power to “convulse the empire to acquire more (power).” Similarly, King George III reportedly exclaimed that if Washington resigned, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Even more extraordinary, Washington gave up power a second time. After being called back into the service of his country to help write a new constitution and then to serve as its first president, a position he won by unanimous vote of the electoral college — twice — he again retired to Mount Vernon. There were no presidential term limits in place at the time, but Washington established a two-term precedent of his own volition.

Future leaders honored that precedent until Franklin Delano Roosevelt won office four times. The nation then passed the 22nd amendment to the Constitution, which made Washington’s self-imposed two-term limit the law of the land. Washington’s selfless act was thus made even more potent simply because he abdicated power without being required to do so.

History has even more lessons to teach about power: Washington disliked political parties and feared the disunity and seeds of revolution that they might sow. World history did not offer many examples of the peaceful transfer of power, especially between political rivals or dueling monarchies. Leaders in the new American nation, nonetheless, espoused competing political philosophies, with John Adams at the top of the Federalist Party and Thomas Jefferson as a Democratic Republican. After one term as president, Adams lost to Jefferson, his political rival. Rather than call out the military to defend his presidency or marshal his followers to come to his aid, Adams peacefully abdicated power. He walked away and handed his opponent the reins of power.

It was an act of civic virtue that established a remarkable precedent in world history. Thus far, the United States has escaped the more common revolutionary cycles that have dominated other areas of the globe. Those who came after Adams followed his lead and, over time, we have thus come to assume that it has always been so and must always be so.

Yet, history suggests otherwise. As Trumbull said of Washington’s resignation, “‘Tis a conduct so novel, so inconceivable” that someone would give up the “powers they possess.” Decades later, Joseph Smith made a similar claim. But in our day, we may have lost sight of the implausibility of it all and assume that power always passes peacefully, even between political opponents.

If so, we may fail to recognize the lessons history has to offer. A willingness to abandon power was a bug that became a feature in our nation’s political history — that is, until recently. With that long view in mind, we can then attempt to assess what the globe rippling ramifications might be if the principles of power that Washington and Adams established through their novel and inconceivable actions are left unguarded today.

W. Paul Reeve is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies in the History Department at the University of Utah.