The great American philosopher Kenny Rogers once sang:

“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run.

…If you’re going to play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right.

Our current president clearly doesn’t know it’s time to fold ’em and walk away. He might do well to look to the example set by George Washington, officially resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. When he stepped down, Washington eschewed a chance to take control of the American government and, in doing so, to right the wrongs that the Continental Congress had inflicted on the officers and soldiers who had served under him. This choice “was-is-the most important moment in American history,” asserted the late historian Thomas Fleming in 2007.

In honor of that moment, as today’s collective #stampoftheday, I offer up five different stamps: a 1-cent stamp issued in 1925 showing Washington taking command of the Continental Army in Cambridge; a 2-cent stamp issued in 1928 showing Washington praying at Valley Forge; two stamps from the 1932 series of 12 stamps that all pictured Washington (a 3-cent stamp based on a painting done by Charles Willson Steele at Valley Forge in 1777 and a 6-cent stamp using an image taken from John Trumbull’s painting of “George Washington Just Before the Battle of Trenton”) and a 1-cent stamp from the 1936/1937 series of Army and Navy stamps picturing Washington and Nathanael Greene, one of his most able generals (with Mt. Vernon in the background).

But what’s all the fuss about Washington’s resignation? The Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Revolutionary War had been signed in September 1783 and the last British troops left New York City in late November. So at one level, didn’t it make sense for Washington to hang up his spurs and go home?

That view overlooks the fact that Washington had unfinished business and unresolved differences with the leaders of the ineffective Continental Congress. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, for example, Thomas Mifflin, the president of the Congress in 1783, led a nasty (but unsuccessful) campaign to humiliate Washington and force him to resign. More important, Congress had refused to raise taxes to pay soldiers, so many officers and soldiers hadn’t been paid in two years and, with the war over, were being told go home penniless. Upset by this turn of events, some senior officers were planning an armed march on Congress to demand their back pay. Some not only discussed these plans with Washington but also suggested that he head the march, dissolve Congress, and make himself head of the government.

The suggested coup d’Žtat didn’t take place largely because of Washington, who promised to personally plead the soldiers’ case with Congress. According to Fleming, he also wrote that if he failed, “then shall I have learned what ingratitude is” and the memory would “embitter every moment of my future life.” Members of Congress not only failed to respond to his pleas, they also accused the officers of wanting to become “leeches” living off the labor of their patriotic fellow citizens.

Nevertheless, on December 23, Washington stood before the Congress and officially tendered his resignation. He began by stating: “The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place; I have now the honor…of presenting myself before [members of Congress] to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the Service of my Country.”

A member who had been Washington’s former aide de camp, later recalled that Washington’s voice “faultered and sunk…[and] the whole house felt his agitation.” But he recovered his composure and “proceeded…in the most penetrating manner.”

Washington said he was “happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable Nation.” And he made sure to say the officers and soldiers who were still serving, were “worthy of the favorable notice and patronage of Congress.” After pausing again to collect himself, he took his original commission out of his coat, handed it over and said: “having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and…take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

He left the next day for Mt. Vernon. Within in a few years he was summoned back to public life, first to preside of the Constitutional Convention and then to serve as president for eight years (when he again decided that it was time to gracefully and graciously leave the public stage).

Contemporaries recognized the importance of his decision to step down. Trumbull, the painter, who had once been one of Washington’s aide’s de camp, wrote from London that the decision “excites the astonishment and admiration of this part of the world. ‘Tis a Conduct so novel, so inconceivable to People, who, far from giving up powers they possess, are willing to convulse the Empire to acquire more.” King George III told Benjamin West, another American painter living in London, that Washington was “the greatest character of the age” and his decision placed him “in a light the most distinguished of any man living.”

Those observations have stood the test of time. Writing in 2007, Fleming noted, “the man who could have dispersed a feckless Congress and obtained for himself and his officers riches worthy of their courage was renouncing absolute power to become a private citizen.” And in 2017, the US House Representatives’ historian asserted that Washington’s resignation was “one of the nation’s great acts of statesmanship.”

George Washington, it seems, knew when to fold them and when to walk away.

Donald Trump does not, in part because, as Rogers put it, he never learned how to play the game right.

Be well, stay safe, play the game right, fight for justice, and work for peace.