Jawj Wawshington Slept Heah: an historical drama of overemphasized proportions
Narrator: Good evening. National Patriotic Radio is proud to present to you John Blacksmith's award- winning documentary, "George Washington Slept Here." It portrays a special time gone by when some of the greatest men and women in the history of our United States took lodging at a small Inn near Philadelphia. We join part seventeen, already in progress.
[service bell]
Clerk: Can I help you? You probably need a room for the night, and although that's what you think you'll get from me, you're in for a surprise when I give you a key to a room that's already occupied--by a very famous man, none other than President George Washington.
Abraham Lincoln: Yes. My name is Abraham Lincoln--and, though I'm only a lawyer from Illinois, my name will one day be recognized throughout the country as that of "The Great Emancipator". I need a room for the night, so that I may rest before I, Abraham Lincon, continue along the path towards presidency, greatness, and eventually, a tragic demise at the hands of confederate loyalist John Wilkes Booth.
Clerk: James will get your bags--future president James K. Polk, that is.
James K. Polk: May I take your unusually lengthy coat and trademark stove-pipe hat? Come this way and I'll show you to your room. [sound of two people walking to room] Or at least you think it's yours. It's really occupied by our nation's first president. But I bet you don't know that in 1845 I'll be elected our nation's eleventh president in a narrow victory over the Whig candidate, Henry Clay. [walking stops] Here you go; take care not to wake the gently slumbering father of our country to whose room you've mistakenly been assigned.
Abraham Lincoln: Thank you for carrying my bags--those of a shrewd republican lawyer raised in a log cabin in Springfield Illinois. Although I oppose slavery in general, an attitude which is destined to cost me an 1858 Illinois state senate election, I appreciate the help.
Betsy Ross: Porter! Porter!
James K. Polk: Yes, Miss Betsy Ross?
Betsy Ross: Porter, can you direct me to the meeting of the Women's Sewing Club being held in the selfsame inn where 16th president Abraham Lincoln has been incorrectly assigned to the very room in which George Washington, the father of our country, now lies snoring? I, Betsy Ross, need to reputedly make the first American flag in June of 1776.
James K. Polk: Yes. Follow me--all the time not realizing that I am extremely desirious to acquire California, and feel that a war will probably be the best mode of settling our affairs in Mexico. [receding into the distance] Will Mexico prefer war? We will be ready to wage it. Will she desire peace? She must be the first to seek it.
Narrator: In the next scene, Abraham Lincoln --whose long and distinguished political career as president, statesman, and hero began in the Illinois State Legislature, where the 25-year lawyer was an assemblyman-- enters the room occupied by the dozing initial commander-in-chief, having been assigned there in error by the staff of the historic inn. Meanwhile, the Cherokee alphabet is being invented by Sequoya, and will be adapted by other Indian tribes--thus enabling thousands of Indians to read and write in their own languages. That is, until James K. Polk's manifest destiny's manifestation in President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 pushes them all off their land and onto the infamous "trail of tears." But that story awaits us in episode ninety-four. Let's listen now as the two perhaps greatest presidents of them all-- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln--meet in a most unlikely fashion.
[door opens. sound of snoring first president]
Abraham Lincoln: Strangely, I, Abraham Lincoln, find myself in the bedroom of our nation's first president as he slumbers peacefully, dreaming of something or another--yet unknown to me. Little more do I realize that I will, tragically, be assassinated by confederate loyalist J ohn Wilkes Booth in the year 1865 while watching the play "Our American Cousin" at the Ford Theatre in Washington D.C.
George Washington [mumbling in his sleep]: ... cannot ... mmb ... tell a lie ... [garble] ... it is I who chopped down that cherry tree! ... though ... nnn ... it won't be I ... who'll support political factionalism ... in the period immediately following my term ...
[knock at door]
Abraham Lincoln: Yes, come in ...
Harriet Tubman: I have come to collect the dirty linens. Born into slavery, I will escape from Maryland in 1820. I'll go back over 20 times, though, and help over three hundred slaves flee north on the Underground Railway.
Abraham Lincoln: I am afraid that will be impossible. Much to my impending surprise, the husband of Martha Washington will be discovered snoozing upon the very linens you wish to collect.
Harriet Tubman: Impossible? Harriet Tubman doesn't know the meaning of the word. Although I'm a black woman living in the era of slavery, I'll go on to speak for the anti-slavery movement and women's rights. Not to mention my forthcoming work as nurse and spy for the Union. So: let's try to lift master Washington, the future wearer of wooden dentures--very gently--and place him on the chair, so he can continue to sleep while I change the linens on that bed.
Abraham Lincoln: I would like to help you, ma'am, but I still haven't noticed the resident of Mount Vernon who lays dreaming. Furthermore, [some music in the background, begin impassioned speech] agitation over slavery will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house which will be divided against itself will not be able to stand. I will come to believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. [end music. yawning] I am suddenly fatigued, and shall retire to my bed. [tries to lie down, bumps into Washington] Why, who is this sleeping in my bed? Could it be George Washington, the General from Virigina whose heroic crossing of the Delaware is to be commemorated by Currier and Ives lithographs on the centennial of the War for Independence?
Narrator: And so we come to the end of episode seventeen of "George Washington Slept Here"--a two hundred and twenty eight part series by award-winning documentary filmmaker John Blacksmith, once an orphaned child whose film career began at the age of seven when he began working at a camera shop owned quite coincidentally by his biological parents. Tune in next week when you'll hear Frances Perkins say:
Frances Perkins: Excuse me, young man. Do you have the time? As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, I'm not only the first woman Cabinet member in United States history, but also the person who explained the workings of the new Social Security Act in a nationwide radio broadcast in September, 1935.
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