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In the preface to this ambitious and largely successful biography of George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis sets the tone by calling his subject "America's greatest secular saint" and "the Foundingest Father of them all."
That puts the biographer's problem nicely. Washington is so universally revered as well as so distant from us in time that he is more marble than human flesh. The biographer's task is to somehow breathe life back into a monument. Ellis has a good track record at this sort of thing. Most recently he did the trick with Thomas Jefferson in AMERICAN SPHINX. His work on Washington is in somewhat the same vein, and is equally accomplished.
Ellis's approach sails close to the dangerous shoals of psycho-biography but never quite runs aground on them. In trying to fathom Washington's true character and motives, he sticks fairly close to the written record without presuming to peer inside his subject's head.
His conclusions are not always those that today's schoolchildren find in their history texts. In the narrow tactical sense, for instance, Ellis judges Washington no great military genius. He points out that Washington lost more battles than he won, he was a control freak and a man very conscious of his place in history. Despite this "posing for posterity," however, Ellis is favorably inclined toward his subject because he had a career "devoted to getting the big things right."
That career, of course, had two separate parts: military commander and --- after four years in retirement --- our first President. Ellis links the two by stressing something not much emphasized by other historians: The job of establishing the new nation was made infinitely more complicated by the memory of British colonial rule, which had bred a general suspicion of any strong central authority. Washington knew that without a strong central government the new nation would probably fail, but he had somehow overcome the popular hatred of governmental "tyranny" and even the dread specter of "monarchy." He was able to accomplish this balancing act mainly through the sheer veneration in which he was held by the vast majority of people. In Ellis's apt phrase, Washington was able to "levitate" above the partisan battles of his time.
Ellis finds Washington's military experience on what was then America's western frontier (western Pennsylvania and the nearby "Ohio Country") during the French and Indian War a crucial experience in forming his world-view. It gave him a grand vision of an American western-oriented destiny that stayed with him into his Presidency. He even thought erroneously that the Potomac River, which flowed placidly past his estate at Mount Vernon, might be the water gateway to the riches of the American interior.
Another issue that Ellis illuminates is that of Washington's attitude toward slavery. His letters show that he was in favor of eventual emancipation by slow and easy stages --- but also that he needed slaves to keep Mount Vernon from sliding into bankruptcy and ruin. There was an uneasy balance of morality and economics in his thinking.
Ellis is also interesting --- if obviously partisan --- in assessing the infighting among Washington, John Adams, Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton during his presidency. Jefferson in particular comes off badly here.
One minor cavil: Ellis is so concerned with Washington's public career that he largely slights his private life. Martha Washington, for instance, is merely an offstage shadow in this book. Ellis is, however, a vivid and engaging writer. The Washington he recreates seems almost like a normal human being in many respects. That is about all we can ask for at this distance in time.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
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