Last year, Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial (bootleg copies here and here) comparing U.S. policy on enemy combatants with George Washington's policy on prisoners of war as portrayed by David Hackett Fischer. A month beforehand, Callimachus at Done With Mirrors made a similar reflection. Both cited Fischer's argument that the Revolutionary forces held Americans to a higher standard of behavior than had been common, and lamented the loss of that expectation today.
In the American Enterprise Online interview with Fischer, he addresses a different parallel:
Some of our leaders were very careful to, as Sam Adams said, stay in the right and put your enemy in the wrong. They were careful about who fired the first shot. Not only at Lexington and Concord but also George Washington, Lincoln, and FDR in 1941. On the other side are figures in American history who adopted the doctrine of preemption, always with disastrous results. General Gage in 1774 decided he would make a preemptive strike against the armaments of New England. Jefferson Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens explicitly justified the attack on Fort Sumter as a preemptive strike. What they did was to unite their opponents and divide their supporters.