델라웨어 도강작전에 나타난 조지 워싱턴 장군의 리더십

The Leadership of George Washington in the Crossing of the Delaware River

The Crossing of the Delaware River in December, 1776 is one of the pivotal moments in American history. It is because the success of this military action gave a new life to just falling American Revolution. In fact, many studies meanwhile had focused on the historic facts of the Crossing. Thus, these studies did not consider the true qualities of George Washington’s leadership, which is the essence of victory. This paper is aimed to analyze the entities of George Washington’s leadership which turned the direction of the Revolution. Firstly, there is the embrace and unity leadership. The independence army called up for military service urgently, and the minutemen were just a mixed bag compared to the British army, the strongest army in the world. Because they came from several countries and had the special characteristics of their own, they could hardly be put together. The people from northern Virginia region including George Washington behaved the habits of rule and order in the hierarchial society. On the other hand the people from New England stressed the democratic tendency excessively. The people from the mountain area were the strong, disorderly, and rough individualist. The people from the city area were the bumptious. At first, Washington, Commander-in-Chief, had difficulty in allowing the unlike inclinations. But, he overcame the different regionalism and the class consciousness and put the gathering of various types of people into a united army. Secondly, Washington learned leadership from the defeat and the fail. He was completely defeated in the battles of New York and New Jersey and retreated to the Delaware River. However, he was never in a desperate situation and learned something from the defeats. That is the fact that the great military strength, the British army, was weak extremely in the mountainous battles, a guerilla fighting and a surprise attack. And, also, even though England won all the battles, the war did not end unless the arrest or the death of Washington. Thirdly, Washington had a unyielding leadership. He retreated to the Delaware, but knew the time to act something by intuition. Washington was ready, got a good time to act, decided a goal to achieve, and concentrated on it. He supplemented his disadvantages by communicating each other. Washington eventually won the victory of the Delaware battle by diverse guerilla fighting and surprise attacks. George Washington s leadership shown in the Crossing of the Delaware is one of the important driving force to give life to the failing light of American Revolution again.