(As the first editor of the Washington papers, Sparks went about correcting the great man’s spelling, punctuation, and grammar and amending what he considered Washington’s vulgar phrases.) It almost seemed as if everyone with literary ambitions wanted to try his hand at a biography of the man who was first in the hearts of his countrymen. In 1835 James Kirke Paulding’s two-volume Life of Washington appeared, succeeded by Jared Sparks’s admiring biography in 1837. Many biographies that tended to deify him followed, including a five-volume mausoleum by John Marshall in 1804–1807 and single-volume studies by Aaron Bancroft and David Ramsay in 1807. Shortly after Washington’s death, Mason Weems in his Life of Washington (1800) tried to humanize him by making up anecdotes about his youth, including his cutting down his father’s cherry tree, but his adoration of Washington was so great that his book, which is still in print, became an apotheosis of the man. He…was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.” “Did anybody ever see Washington nude?” asked Nathaniel Hawthorne. How many books on George Washington do we need before the monument finally becomes a man, before the remote and impenetrable statue is at last brought down to earth and made into an accessible human being? Right from the beginning Washington seems to have been a distant and unapproachable figure. If each generation of Americans deserves to have its own definitive biography of Washington, then Chernow’s masterpiece is our due.George Washington painting by Charles Willson Peale, 1776 Someone who experienced powerful emotions but publicly maintained an aloof and dignified demeanor a shrewd businessman who struggled in his quest for financial security a demanding slaveholder who became the only “founding father” to free those he held in servitude a public figure who exhibited keen political skills but is not generally regarded as a skilled politician a man of sound judgment who needed ample time to make decisions a warrior who steadfastly adhered to the principal of civilian control over the military a general who lost more battles than he won but ultimately emerged victorious a person who was not an intellectual but committed himself wholeheartedly to the pursuit of certain ideas and a leader with great power who knew when to relinquish it. His Washington is an individual of driving ambition but modest public persona. Reviewed by David Price, Washington Crossing Historic Park Historical InterpreterĪlthough Ron Chernow’s weighty tome is not for every reader, anyone wanting to discover the flesh-and-blood man behind the Washington legend need look no further than this Pulitzer Prize-winning account.Ĭhernow’s elegant prose brilliantly captures America’s elusive “First Hero.”
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