Pilgrimage to Mount Vernon

On the morning of the 25th of April, 1912, 'Abdu'l-Bahá and a small party of His American hosts — Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Parsons, Mírzá Maḥmúd, Dr. Faríd, and one or two others — made the short journey from Washington, D.C. by riverboat down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, the Virginia plantation that had been the home of George Washington. The Master had asked, in advance, that the visit be included in the Washington itinerary. Mr. Parsons had arranged it.

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The boat reached the Mount Vernon dock by mid-morning. The party walked up the long path through the gardens to the mansion. The Master, accompanied by Mahmúd as his interpreter, toured the rooms with the same close attention He had given to the small things of every American visit. He noted the modesty of the dining room; the well-used study; the serviceable bedroom in which the first president had slept; the small library with its modest collection of books.

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The party then walked on to the tomb in the corner of the property where Washington and his wife are buried. The Master stood at the gate of the tomb in silence for some moments. Mahmúd records that He removed His turban — a gesture of personal respect that He did not make at every American site He visited.

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When He spoke, the words He gave were brief.

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> The greatness of this man is that he laid down power when > he might have kept it.

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Mahmúd preserves the explanation that followed. The Master named, in the few minutes He stood at the tomb, the central fact of Washington's career: that he had won a great war, had been offered by his army in effect a kingship, had instead returned to his farm at Mount Vernon, had served two terms as president when called back, and had then declined a third to retire again to private life.

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This pattern of voluntary renunciation, the Master said, was the spiritual signature of the American republic at its founding. It was what Persia under the Qájárs had not had. It was what every aging monarchy in the world should consider at its own peril.

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He went on to extend the principle: that the test of a virtuous person — whether a soldier, a politician, a wealthy businessman, or a religious leader — is whether they can hold power lightly enough to relinquish it when the proper hour for relinquishment arrives. The American Republic, in this respect, had been built on the right foundation. Its preservation through future centuries would depend on the continuing willingness of its leaders to renounce the powers they could no longer rightly keep.

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The party returned by boat to Washington in the afternoon. The brief visit to Mount Vernon was, in Mahmúd's record, one of the most reflective moments of the American tour. The Master had stood at the grave of an American founder, had removed His turban, and had named the great virtue of renunciation as the spiritual virtue on which the entire American experiment had rested.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for April 25, 1912; see original for full text.*

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