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| Source: Amazon.com |
From the book’s cover:
From National Book
Award winner Ron Chernow, a landmark biography of George Washington.
In Washington: A Life
celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the
father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume
life of Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his
troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his
creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his
presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance
as America's first president.
Despite the reverence
his name inspires, Washington remains a lifeless waxwork for many Americans,
worthy but dull. A laconic man of granite self-control, he often arouses more
respect than affection. In this groundbreaking work, based on massive research,
Chernow dashes forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man. A strapping
six feet, Washington was a celebrated horseman, elegant dancer, and tireless
hunter, with a fiercely guarded emotional life. Chernow brings to vivid life a
dashing, passionate man of fiery opinions and many moods. Probing his private
life, he explores his fraught relationship with his crusty mother, his youthful
infatuation with the married Sally Fairfax, and his often conflicted feelings
toward his adopted children and grandchildren. He also provides a lavishly
detailed portrait of his marriage to Martha and his complex behavior as a slave
master.
At the same time,
Washington is an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who
knew how to inspire people. Not only did Washington gather around himself the
foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John
Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but he also brilliantly orchestrated their actions
to shape the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and
establish the office of the presidency.
In this unique
biography, Ron Chernow takes us on a page-turning journey through all the
formative events of America's founding. With a dramatic sweep worthy of its
giant subject, Washington is a magisterial work from one of our most elegant
storytellers.
The review:
The review:
To do a decent summary of Washington:
A Life would be difficult at best, so I'm going to stoop to stealing the
review summary from Amazon.com, and then comment on both the book and what I
learned of Washington from it afterward.
If you want to skip the list of interesting tidbits and get to the meat
of my review, then you'll have some scrolling to do. I suggest... let me see... about thirty paragraphs worth. Yes, did I said thirty.
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| The author, Ron Chernow. / Source: Amazon.com |
Ron Chernow Shares Surprising Facts About George Washington
--Washington was the
only major founder who lacked a college education. John Adams went to Harvard,
James Madison to Princeton, and Alexander Hamilton to Columbia, making
Washington self-conscious about what he called his “defective education.”
--Washington never had
wooden teeth. He wore dentures that were made of either walrus or elephant
ivory and were fitted with real human teeth. Over time, as the ivory got
cracked and stained, it resembled the grain of wood. Washington may have
purchased some of his teeth from his own slaves.
--Washington had a
strangely cool and distant relationship with his mother. During the
Revolutionary War and her son’s presidency, she never uttered a word of praise
about him and she may even have been a Tory. No evidence exists that she ever
visited George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. Late in the Revolutionary
War, Mary Washington petitioned the Virginia legislature for financial relief,
pleading poverty—and, by implication, neglect by her son. Washington, who had
been extremely generous to his mother, was justly indignant.
--Even as a young man,
Washington seemed to possess a magical immunity to bullets. In one early
encounter in the French and Indian War, he absorbed four bullets in his coat
and hat and had two horses shot from under him yet emerged unscathed. This led
one Indian chief to predict that some higher power was guiding him to great events
in the future.
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| The Washington estate at Mount Vernon. Washington was almost constantly making changes and updates to the place, and so the version we have today is somewhat different from what it looked like when first constructed. / Source: History.com |
--By age 30 Washington
had survived smallpox, malaria, dysentery, and other diseases. Although he came
from a family of short-lived men, he had an iron constitution and weathered
many illnesses that would have killed a less robust man. He lived to the age of
67.
--While the
Washingtons were childless—it has always been thought that George Washington
was sterile—they presided over a household teeming with children. Martha had
two children from her previous marriage and she and George later brought up two
grandchildren as well, not to mention countless nieces and nephews.
--That Washington was
childless proved a great boon to his career. Because he had no heirs, Americans
didn’t worry that he might be tempted to establish a hereditary monarchy. And
many religious Americans believed that God had deliberately deprived Washington
of children so that he might serve as Father of His Country.
--Though he tried hard
to be fair and took excellent medical care of his slaves, Washington could be a
severe master. His diaries reveal that during one of the worst cold snaps on
record in Virginia—when Washington himself found it too cold to ride outside—he
had his field slaves out draining swamps and performing other arduous tasks.
--For all her anxiety
about being constantly in a battle zone, Martha Washington spent a full half of
the Revolutionary War with her husband—a major act of courage that has largely
gone unnoticed.
--Washington was
obsessed with his personal appearance, which extended to his personal guard
during the war. Despite wartime austerity and a constant shortage of soldiers,
he demanded that all members of his personal guard be between 5'8" and
5'10"; a year later, he narrowed the range to 5'9" to 5'10."
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| When I Googled for images of "Fort Necessity," I was at first surprised to see the soldiers represented in British red coat uniforms. Then it struck me, as should have been plain all along, they were still British at the time! / Source: paladincom.com |
--While Washington
lost more battles than he won, he still ranks as a great general. His greatness
lay less in his battlefield brilliance—he committed some major strategic
blunders—than in his ability to hold his ragged army intact for more than eight
years, keeping the flame of revolution alive.
--Washington ran his
own spy network during the war and was often the only one privy to the full
scope of secret operations against the British. He anticipated many techniques
of modern espionage, including the use of misinformation and double agents.
--Washington tended
his place in history with extreme care. Even amid wartime stringency, he got
Congress to appropriate special funds for a full-time team of secretaries who
spent two years copying his wartime papers into beautiful ledgers.
--For thirty years,
Washington maintained an extraordinary relationship with his slave and personal
manservant William Lee, who accompanied him throughout the Revolutionary War
and later worked in the presidential mansion. Lee was freed upon Washington’s
death and given a special lifetime annuity.
--The battle of
Yorktown proved the climactic battle of the revolution and the capstone of
Washington’s military career, but he initially opposed this Franco-American
operation against the British—a fact he later found hard to admit.
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| No, Washington didn't have wooden teeth. He did, on the other hand, have a rather unpleasant looking set of dentures that make me glad for modern dentistry. Even if it still seems like a rather barbaric form of science, if you ask me. / Source: mountvernon.org |
--Self-conscious about
his dental problems, Washington maintained an air of extreme secrecy when
corresponding with his dentist and never used such incriminating words as
‘teeth’ or ‘dentures.’ By the time he became president, Washington had only a
single tooth left—a lonely lower left bicuspid that held his dentures in place.
--Washington always
displayed extremely ambivalence about his fame. Very often, when he was
traveling, he would rise early to sneak out of a town or enter it before he
could be escorted by local dignitaries. He felt beleaguered by the social
demands of his own renown.
--At Mount Vernon,
Washington functioned as his own architect—and an extremely original one at
that. All of the major features that we associate with the house—the wide
piazza and colonnade overlooking the Potomac, the steeple and the weathervane
with the dove of peace—were personally designed by Washington himself.
--A master showman
with a brilliant sense of political stagecraft, Washington would disembark from
his coach when he was about to enter a town then mount a white parade horse for
maximum effect. It is not coincidental that there are so many fine equestrian
statues of him.
--Land-rich and
cash-poor, Washington had to borrow money to attend his own inauguration in New
York City in 1789. He then had to borrow money again when he moved back to
Virginia after two terms as president. His public life took a terrible toll on
his finances.
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| George Washington's relationship with the thorny problem of slavery is a complex one, and probably not something that can be definitively explained, even by experts today. It appears Washington had misgivings about the concept, though at the same time, he was without doubt benefitting from the system itself. In all likelihood, Washington was so much a man of his time on this particular subject that he probably did not see slavery as fundamentally wrong, as later generations would. Of course, this is my two cents on the subject. I am sure there are experts out there who could easily argue this point much more convincingly - one way or the other - than I. / Source: blog.reidreport.com |
--Martha Washington
was never happy as First Lady—a term not yet in use—and wrote with regret after
just six months of the experience: “I think I am more like a state prisoner
than anything else...And as I cannot do as I like, I am obstinate and stay home
a great deal.”
--When the temporary
capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, Washington brought six or seven slaves
to the new presidential mansion. Under a Pennsylvania abolitionist law, slaves
who stayed continuously in the state for six months were automatically free. To
prevent this, Washington, secretly coached by his Attorney General, rotated his
slaves in and out of the state without telling them the real reason for his
actions.
--Washington nearly
died twice during his first term in office, the first time from a tumor on his
thigh that may have been from anthrax or an infection, the second time from
pneumonia. Many associates blamed his sedentary life as president for the sudden
decline in his formerly robust health and he began to exercise daily.
--Tired of the demands
of public life, Washington never expected to serve even one term as president,
much less two. He originally planned to serve for only a year or two, establish
the legitimacy of the new government, then resign as president. Because of one
crisis after another, however, he felt a hostage to the office and ended up
serving two full terms. For all his success as president, Washington frequently
felt trapped in the office.
--Exempt from attacks
at the start of his presidency, Washington was viciously attacked in the press
by his second term. His opponents accused him of everything from being an inept
general to wanting to establish a monarchy. At one point, he said that not a
single day had gone by that he hadn’t regretted staying on as president.
--Washington has the
distinction of being the only president ever to lead an army in battle as
commander-in-chief. During the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, he personally
journeyed to western Pennsylvania to take command of a large army raised to put
down the protest against the excise tax on distilled spirits.
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| Why did Washington cross the Delaware? To get to the other side, of course. / Source: metmuseum.org |
--Two of the favorite
slaves of George and Martha Washington—Martha’s personal servant, Ona Judge and
their chef Hercules—escaped to freedom at the end of Washington’s presidency.
Washington employed the resources of the federal government to try to entrap
Ona Judge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and return her forcibly to Virginia. His
efforts failed.
--Washington stands
out as the only founder who freed his slaves, at least the 124 who were under
his personal control. (He couldn’t free the so-called ‘dower slaves’ who came
with his marriage to Martha.) In his will, he stipulated that the action was to
take effect only after Martha died so that she could still enjoy the income
from those slaves.
--After her husband
died, Martha grew terrified at the prospect that the 124 slaves scheduled to be
freed after her death might try to speed up the timetable by killing her.
Unnerved by the situation, she decided to free those slaves ahead of schedule
only a year after her husband died.
--Like her husband,
Martha Washington ended up with a deep dislike of Thomas Jefferson, whom she
called “one of the most detestable of mankind.” When Jefferson visited her at
Mount Vernon before he became president, Martha said that it was the second
worst day of her life—the first being the day her husband died.
(the preceding factoid paragraphs taken from Amazon.com)
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| George Washington, kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. Many have said that Washington was not a religious man, and therefore they claim this picture is a complete fabrication. Personally, I think Washington was a pragmatist. If prayer would have helped in such a bleak cause as the one he faced, I'd bet he'd have done it. Of course, the book sheds some light on Washington's religious motivations, but sadly, by the time I have gotten around to adding photos to my notes on the book, I have forgotten the details. / Source: worldhistoryinstitute.com |
If you got this far, then you see just how much information Washington: A Life packs in. As an aside, I recall being in the first
grade and learning about George Washington, and I remember being told lots of
things that I suppose most Americans are.
It's almost a folklore, Washington's life. The one I remember most specifically was that
Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and when asked about it, (the impression
given was this was done when he was a kid), he said "I cannot tell a lie,
I did it." This made an impression
upon me as a young boy, as I am sure it was intended to do. I wanted to be honest too, and have the guts
to tell the truth, no matter what might come of it. A pity that life has taught me so many shades
of gray since those days of boyhood. But
that innocent ambition toward honesty was bolstered by this story about George
Washington.
So it came as some surprise to the child still left
lingering in my somewhat older bones to discover in Chernow's text a man who
was much more flawed than my first grade teacher gave credit for. Yes, I'm old enough to understand that the
stories we tell our children are not always anything more than wishful thinking
and good intentions, but the personal strengths of the man Washington were
equally balanced with flaws I never imagined.
He was tough to live with, gripped with depression, indecisiveness, and
could be down-right dishonest at times.
A specific instance of this that the book really surprised me on was
Washington's use of deception in perpetuating his slaves who attended him in
Philadelphia, the temporary capital city.
Washington was informed by his Attorney General that the law in
Philadelphia stated that any slaves who remained in the city for a day longer
than six months time were to become free.
Then the attorney general helped Washington circumvent this law, by
advising him that the clock started over as soon as any slave in question left town. So Washington, with his wife's full
compliance, went about keeping his slaves under his ownership by sending them
away before the clock ran out, then bringing them back again.
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| Yes, the cherry tree incident did not occur as recorded in anecdotal history. But the sentiment it raises has been imbued with a power on this author's mind that goes back directly to the morality imparted by a teacher when I was at a very tender age. I wish I could so easily take to such notions as a adult as I could when a child. / Source: howstuffworks.com |
Washington seems to never have really understood that black
slaves were really human beings, and not some odd species of children who must
be worked very hard and treated as inferiors.
This is a sad commentary on the man who is called the father of our
country. The information Chernow
provides makes it clear that slavery was a hot button issue right from the
formation of the nation, and that Washington, though ambivalent about slavery
as a general practice - and one who eventually freed many of his slaves - never
truly understood the wrongness of the institution in of itself.
Washington: A Life
was good, if a bit long. But it was also
richly detailed, and full of information I had not considered before. Washington is enigmatic in many ways to the
modern American, since so much legend and dogma is wrapped up in his years of service
to the country. Chernow does a good job
of giving a fairly detailed and balanced viewpoint of this great leader, though
he does spend too much time in places emphasizing Washington's goodness, and in
others seems to be criticizing his weaknesses. It is as if Chernow wants us to see past the
myths and clutter that surrounds Washington, but is afraid to cast him in too
much of any one light.
For my part I will say in the book's favor that it is
interesting and full of detail, and though it is quite a long read compared to
some of the other volumes I've gone through lately, it offers much for the
prospective student of the life of George Washington. I suppose I liked it especially because it
took historical matters that I was forced to grudgingly study as a kid and have
never taken much account of due to that fact, and made them seem relevant and
interesting. Things like Fort Necessity
(in which a young Washington made serious tactical errors and should have not
gotten out of alive, which of course would have seriously changed the fate of
U.S. history), the trial of Valley Forge, Shays Rebellion, the Constitutional
Convention, the birth of political parties in the U.S. (and the hot tempers
that attended this - if you think partisan politics is a relatively modern day
invention, you'll be surprised at the general tempestuousness seen in the
wrangling of the early days of the Republic), the Whiskey Rebellion, Jay's
Treaty, the XYZ Affair, and so many other things go from bland stories that you
have to place in memory long enough to regurgitate out for the exam, to real
and vibrant issues.
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| An uneasy sidebar of the life of Washington pertains to how he was viewed by North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh saw his nation's struggle for independence in similar light to many of history's great freedom fighters, including Washington. And sadly, though I doubt Washington would have vocalized it in such a way, the quote above in some ways mirrors the feelings that the war of attrition American rebels had to practice in order to wear down British resolve in the colonies. / Source: rugusavay.com |
OK, so I took most of this review from Amazon's product page... I do that sometimes when I am feeling writers block. I promise my next review will be at least 98.2% original.
Learn more about Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow, on Amazon.com
The parting comment:
Well he sounds almost equal with Lorde in terms of singing quality... but I liked the parody. Nice stuff. Now if we can just get Weird Al to do a cover of it.
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