You know George?
A nuanced portrait of Washington, our first founding father
America was not a viable nation when George Washington took office as president in 1789. There were 13 independent states, each guarding its own interests and each wary of a strong central government. Such was Washington’s indispensability to the United States, writes Peter Henriques in his new book, “First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington.” Without Washington’s support “and a tacit collective assumption he would be heading the resulting government, the new constitution never would have been ratified,” he writes.
After having led the successful revolt of the Continental Army over British rule in the War of Independence, Washington was the unrivaled hero and savior of the new country. He was unanimously elected to preside over the Constitutional Convention, where the delegates created the presidency with Washington in mind and then unanimously elected him to assume the office.
As president, Washington kept the country united and at peace in its early, vulnerable years. He benefited from the counsel of two brilliant, ambitious men: Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Washington and Jefferson differed significantly in their political philosophies and visions for America, and Washington came to view Jefferson as a deceitful man, unworthy of trust, or as Martha Washington put it, “one of the most detestable of mankind.”
Washington viewed a strong government as necessary for strengthening the union and protecting liberty both for individuals and states. Jefferson, the nation’s third president, viewed a strong government as a threat to liberty, convinced it would be desirous of more power at the expense of liberty. Jefferson resigned his post as secretary of state in 1793, two years after the Western Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion. He saw Washington’s manner of dampening the rebellion as a dangerous overreach of government power.
“First and Always” is a slim 240 pages, with each chapter written to stand on its own. The chapters function as free-standing essays about the people and events that shaped Washington. Raised in a prominent family in a deeply hierarchical Virginia, the oldest, largest, most populous and powerful of the states, Washington was a product of a pre-democratic world that looked skeptically upon the common man.
“While he would have agreed with Lincoln’s later assertion that government was to be ‘of the people’ and ‘for the people,’ ” Mr. Henrique writes, “he would never have agreed that it should be ‘by the people.’ ”
Washington possessed over 50,000 acres of land, owned or managed 670 slaves and was considered one of America’s richest men. But Mr. Henriques believes Washington came to understand the tragic fact of slavery. He was the only founding father to free all of his slaves, and he never dismissed the idea free Black people could live in harmony with white people in the United States. In his will, he explicitly called for younger slaves to be taught to read and write.
“It was the saddest aspect of his remarkably illustrious life,” Mr. Henriques writes. Washington called it “the only unavoidable subject of regret.”
In his farewell address, he emphasized the importance of preserving the Union, which he saw threatened by warring factions and party divisions. Neither the Constitution nor the Federalist Papers had envisioned political parties, and none existed when Washington became president. However, he in fact “died a highly partisan Federalist,” Mr. Henriques writes.
Almost anyone who wrote to Washington later in his life received a reply, and any stranger who came to pay homage at Mount Vernon was welcomed. Historians rank Washington third among U.S. presidents behind Lincoln and FDR, but because he was the first to govern, Mr. Henriques argues, he will always be first in the hearts of Americans.