George Washington is by far the most important figure in the history of the United States. Against all military odds, he liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire and presided over the process to produce and ratify a Constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. In two terms as president, he set that Constitution to work with such success that, by the time he finally retired, America was well on its way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

Despite his importance, Washington remains today a distant figure to many Americans. Previous books about him are immensely long, multivolume, and complicated. Paul Johnson has now produced a brief life that presents a vivid portrait of the great man as young warrior, masterly commander-in-chief, patient Constitution maker, and exceptionally wise president. He also shows Washington as a farmer of unusual skill and an entrepreneur of foresight, patriarch of an extended family, and proprietor of one of the most beautiful homes in America, which he largely built and adorned.

Trenchant and original as ever, Johnson has given us a brilliant, sharply etched portrait of this iconic figure—both as a hero and as a man.

George Washington

The Founding FatherBy Johnson, Paul

AtlasBooks

ISBN: 006075365X

Chapter One

A Young Gentleman's Youth
in Virginia

As the central actor in the American Revolution, GeorgeWashington was one of the most important figures in worldhistory. As America's commander in chief throughout the eight-yearstruggle against Britain he effectively liberated the thirteen coloniesfrom imperial rule. He then presided over the process whereby thenew nation drafted, ratified, and enacted its federal Constitution. Finally,for eight years he directed the administration that put the Constitutionto work, with such success that, suitably updated andamended, it has lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium.

The Revolution he thus led to success was the first of a series thatcreated the modern world in which we live. Its spirit was animatedby the same love of representative government and respect for therule of law that had produced England's unwritten constitution overmany centuries. Thanks to Washington's genius, that spirit was successfully transferred to the new American nation. Subsequent revolutions,in France in the 1790s, and in Latin America during the followingquarter century, were marred by tragedies of violence andambition that led to lasting instability, in which the rule of law couldnot take root. This pattern was repeated, all too often, in the revolutionsof the twentieth century, whereby the peoples of Asia andAfrica became independent. Throughout this whole period, however,the United States clung to the principles for which Washingtonfought, and followed during his administrations. They enabledit to survive a near-fatal civil war, to become the world's largest economy,to take in the poor of the planet and turn them into the richestpeople in history, and finally, at the end of the twentieth century,to emerge as the sole superpower. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States seems set to play the leading part inmaking the earth secure and democratic. In this immense process,then, Washington played, and still plays, a unique role, both asfounding father and exemplar of moderation and wisdom.

What sort of man was Washington, and how did he achieve somuch? There ought to be no difficulty in answering this question ifdocumentation alone could supply an answer. For more than a thirdof his life he worked in the service of his country, and all that he didofficially is recorded in the National Archives on a scale no Europeanstate could then equal. The American nation-state was born, inpublic, as it were, and minutely recorded. In addition, from the ageof about fourteen,Washington deliberately preserved every scrap ofpaper belonging to him, including diaries, letters sent and received, accounts, and other day-to-day transactions. As he grew older, hearranged these papers in chronological order, and by name and subject.He seems to have known from an early stage in his career thathe would be a figure in history, and he therefore wanted the recordto be preserved accurately with the particular object of demonstratingthat the offices he held were undertaken from duty, not pride.His overwhelming ambition was to be thought unambitious. His obsessionwith his papers was thus a strange combination of modestyand self-awareness. He took his archive with him when he went towar, and his personal guard was under strict instructions to protectit with their lives and hustle it to a secret place of safety if the headquarterscame under threat. After the war it went to his house,Mount Vernon, and was later hugely augmented by his papers as apresident, preserved and sorted by a private secretary and archivist.When Washington died, his assistant Jared Sparks took the entirearchive to Boston whence, in 1832, it was delivered to the Library ofCongress, which had bought it from the heirs. Mounted, one documentper page, hinged at left, and bound in leather, the papersoccupy 163 linear feet of shelving, and are sold on 124 reels of microfilm,now on disc.Taken together, they constitute the most completerecord of a life in the entire eighteenth century, exceeding byfar the vast quantities of memorabilia left behind by James Boswell,for instance, or Horace Walpole.

Despite this, and despite the innumerable accounts of him bycontemporaries, and the mountainous literature compiled by historians,so vast that probably no one person can read and digest it, Washington remains a remote and mysterious figure. He puzzledthose who knew and worked with him, and who often disagreed violentlyabout his merits and abilities. He puzzles us.No man's mindis so hard to enter and dwell within. Everyone agreed, and agrees, hewas a paragon. But a rich or an empty one? A titan of flesh and bloodor a clockwork figure programmed to do wisely? Let us inquire.

The first important fact is that Washington was of impeccableEnglish ancestry and came from the class he admired the most: theindependent gentry who owned land. All his life he aspired tobehave like a gentleman and to own as much land as he could farm.These gentlemen farmers came from Northampton in the heart ofEngland and were hugely loyal to the monarchy, though Northamptonthe city, a haunt of shoemakers, is also notorious for producingrebels. In 1657 John Washington, second officer on the ketch SeaHorse, of London, sailing to Virginia to pick up a cargo of tobacco,was wrecked on a Potomac shoal, near where Washington the citystands. He decided to settle in Westmoreland County, married AnnePope, daughter of a substantial man serving in the Virginia Houseof Burgesses, and so acquired seven hundred acres at Bridges Creek,plus the capital to begin farming. He became vestryman, burgess,magistrate, and militia colonel, helped to suppress Bacon's Rebellionin 1676, and died owning more than eight thousand acres, includingan estate at Hunting Creek, higher up the Potomac, said to betwenty-five hundred acres ...

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