Washington DC—On Monday afternoon, a grassroots theater group from Third Act DC, Maryland and Virginia, presented selected speeches of the founding fathers outside the Capitol on President’s Day. The one-act play was free and open to the public and drew a small crowd of admirers on the chilly overcast holiday. Few tourists were visiting the Capitol as tourism in Washington DC has effectively collapsed to near covid levels not seen since 2020, during Trump’s first term.
The purpose of the play was to interpret what the founders would have said if they could speak from beyond the grave about the current leaders and their congressional enablers. But there was really no need to ask the question of what the founders would have said because they had already spoken about it, according to a flyer the Third Act members handed out to those assembled before them. The flyers had the speech texts and the dates they were delivered.
The roles of George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln were played by Lawrence M and Jim L. Dressed in the authentic looking costumes of the presidents they portrayed, they read portions of speeches and letters from the two former presidents.
The founders were accompanied by two other notable characters, Lady Liberty, consumed by Jackie (last name not given), and the Town Cryer played by Mary (last name not given). An ensemble of rhythmic instruments were played by other Third Act members to add beat and meter to the play. The town cryer acted in the role as a stage manager, directing questions to the characters.
Jim L played Lincoln’s role well with a tall slender build, top hat, black suit, and dark beard. He read the Gettysburg Address as well as several of Lincoln’s most notable quotations. The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech ever delivered by a president. For generations, school age children were required to recite it from memory for their social studies classes.
Another of Lincoln’s quotes was taken from his October 15, 1858 speech during which he spoke to a nation still trying to find its way as a just nation. The speech asked the question of whether or not the nation would continue to be a nation respected for individual and human rights, equality, and liberty for all, or would it be transformed into a nation ruled by a king.
“”[The] two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle [are] the common right of humanity and the…divine right of kings.”
Lincoln uttered this during his seventh debate with Stephen Douglas over the issue of slavery and whether or not the clause in the Declaration of Independence “…all men were created equal…” meant all men should be free with no enslavement. Lincoln of course argued the inhumane treatment of slaves was inconsistent with the meaning of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
Although Lincoln lost the Senate race for the State of Illinois that year, it helped him gain enough popularity to win the Presidency in 1860. And Lincoln’s election to the presidency that year led to his Emancipation Proclamation and an historic change of direction for freedom for all.
Lincoln also recited from his November 20, 1860 speech he gave during his presidential campaign that year, “Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”
These two quotes skewer Trump’s defense for the elimination individual rights and respond to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) running roughshod over established legal protections enshrined since the nation’s earliest days. DHS disregard for the individual rights of both citizens and legal immigrants, and the inhumane conditions he’s has directed in the concentration camps where immigrants are being held are anathema to every right the founders intended when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Lawrence read from George Washington’s farewell address about the importance of respecting the separation of powers in a republic, even before the new nation was in its second presidency. “[T]he habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.”
Incidentally, Lawrence reminded the audience that it was Washington himself who declined a third presidential term and rejected being thought of or considered to be the nation’s king.
Donald Trump managed to slide a few statements into the script from sidewalk next to the venerable presidents as they spoke. Dressed in a rubber pull-over mask with a bottle of bleach attached intravenously to his arm, Trump’s character responded to the founding president’s speeches with accolades of compliments to himself as the greatest president that ever lived. He offered unworkable solutions to problems he himself had created, and swore that Jeffery Epstein was as good an historical figure as any other the country had known.
The theater was implying how far from grace the office of the presidency had fallen.
But it should also remembered that the Colonial life of the 1770s, the new nation of the 1780s, when George Washington was President, and during the Union of the 1850s and 1860s when Abraham Lincoln was president, was more of an ideological concept than a reality.
The founders offered a glimpse of what a republic under their vision of liberty and democracy could become, though the country still had a long way to go. Many of the most cherished rights were not granted until the 20th century. Among the rights to come were a woman’s right to vote in 1920, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Roe vs. Wade in 1971 and the right for one to decide whether or not to give birth, and later, the recognition of same sex marriage in 2013. These were just a few of those advances in the republic’s governmental infrastructure.
On President’s Day 2026, it was a bittersweet moment in the history of the United States. It was fitting to pause and reflect on the words and wisdom of the founding fathers. They told of how a young nation could prosper if it adhered to their design, and followed their wisdom. They warned it how vulnerable it was to the whims of would be kings. They predicted how rapidly it could fall and how quick losing those rights could be if it diverted even a little bit from their framework.
They were right.
