"George Washington," David O. Stewart

                                                                    Sydney M. Williams

George Washington, David O. Stewart

April 17, 2021

 

“That gift of judgement, steeped in the moral obligations that

come with possessing power, allowed him to inspire a nation.”

                                                                                                                                David O. Stewart

                                                                                                                                George Washington

 

When we think of George Washington, the image is Gilbert Stuart’s portrait, or standing as he crossed the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776. We think of Washington myths created by “Parson” Weems, on which many of us grew up. We think of Mount Vernon. And we ask: Do we need another biography? Ron Chernow, author of Washington, A Life (2010), puts the number about our first President at nine hundred.

 

But, just as Job had his trials, so did George Washington. Nature endowed him with a good mind, height, strength and resolve. He was fortunate to have a family connection with the Fairfaxes, a wealthy Virginia family. But his father died when he was young, and near poverty deprived him of the education he so ardently desired. The subtitle is “The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father.” This biography spends less time on the Revolution and his Presidency and more on earlier years. “Washington’s story,” Mr. Stewart writes, “is not one of effortless superiority, but one of excellence achieved with great effort.” After years on Virginia’s western frontier, including defeat at Fort Necessity in 1754, a self-doubting Washington wrote to John Robinson, Speaker of colonial Virginia’s House of Burgesses, on August 5, 1756: “I am wandering in a wilderness of difficulties, and am ignorant of the ways to extricate myself.”

 

In 1759, Washington traded his surveying tools and military career for a legislative job. Lessons were learned that served him in future years. “In place of the impetuous colonel would arise a patient leader…Years of colonial politics would teach him to measure words and consider actions, while gauging the consequences of both.” Years spent in Virginia’s Burgess helped him understand and defend American rights and taught him that the military should take instructions from the people’s representatives. The role of Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution made him favor a strong national government, with ability to impose and collect taxes. Shay’s Rebellion, during the period between the end of the War for Independence and the formation of an American government, taught him that unification of the states would be critical for independence. Stewart writes: “Washington had matured in a political culture built on consensus within a small elite.” In his Farewell Address, Washington warned that partisanship was inevitable: it is “inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.” The author adds: “For the pragmatic Washington, reciprocal checks on the government’s centers of power preserved popular control and individual liberty.” 

 

We who live in the United States today are fortunate that George Washington became our first President. In naming him Commander-in-Chief, the Continental Congress recognized “Washington’s extraordinary talent for winning the confidence of others…” He knew he must help steer the Revolution past the Charybdis of anarchy and the Scylla of authoritarianism. He set a standard for a citizen-led government, that for a people to live freely, government must subordinate itself to the will of its citizens. He had faults, among them slave ownership. He recognized it as a sin but could not extricate himself from its economic binds. However, his will stipulated that his slaves be freed upon his and Martha’s deaths. David Stewart has written a valuable addition to the pantheon of Washington biographies.