Peter R. Henriques - First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington

A FTER I published Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington in 2006, the likelihood of my writing another book about George Washington seemed nil. I had retired from George Mason University, and I viewed that volume as my best effort to share with a wider readership what I had learned in many years of studying this remarkable man.

Then Ron Hurst, one of my earliest and still one of my favorite students, now vice president of Collections, Conservation, and Museums and chief curator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, rekindled our friendship. Thanks to Rons hello on Facebook, I was invited to present the 2011 Distinguished Lecture Series at Colonial Williamsburg. My appearances there before wonderfully receptive audiences led to approximately thirty other talks, almost all of them on various aspects of George Washingtons life and character. Additionally, for many years I regularly discussed His Excellency at George Mason Universitys Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and at Gadsbys Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia, among other places.

Readying these lectures enriched my understanding of the man I thought I knew, drawing me into aspects of Washington that I had not pursued before. This additional research and reflection persuaded me that I had enough fresh material and insights to fill another volume. I have attempted in First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington to deepen the portrait that I sketched in my book Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington. First and Always is a new portrait, but it is of the same man and therefore makes many of the same points as Realistic Visionary. Indeed, I have incorporated a few brief passages from that book. As in Realistic Visionary, each chapter in First and Always is designed to stand on its own, which means revisiting George Washingtons extreme sensitivity to criticism and other themes. For these repetitions I beg the readers indulgence.

While each of this volumes chapters is also designed to stand on its own, I hope that taken together they will strengthen the case I make in chapter 8, What Made George Washington Tick. In that closing essay I contend that Washington was deeply ambitious, massively concerned with his reputation, and in regular search of an adoring publics approbation. His drive for honor and fame was integral to his remarkable leadership (chapter 1). Lack of praise from an unrelentingly demanding mother had left him with an unquenchable thirst for praise (chapter 2). His studiously maintained mask of revolutionary virtue led to some of the myths about him, which I dissect in chapter 3. One of the most fraught aspects of the Asgill Affair, described in chapter 4, was that Washingtons own actions threatened his image as a humane and admirable leader. At the root of his breaks with five famous Virginians was his desire to protect and preserve his reputation (chapter 5). His actions with regard to his enslaved workers were often influenced by how he thought those actions might be viewed by the outside world, and he freed his slaves in part to remove a potential blot from his historical reputation (chapter 6). And the extreme partisanship he displayed at his careers end arose in part out of fear that the Republicans would undo his legacy and impel America in a wrong direction (chapter 7).

It is no secret that I have great admiration and respect for George Washington. Full disclosureI even wear a gold coin medallion of him around my neck. That admiration acknowledges that George Washington was a man of the eighteenth century, which was a very different world from ours. Sadly, Washingtons paeans of praise about promoting liberty and republican values were announced with only free white people in mind. His record with persons of color is much less admirable. His thoughts on blacks, Native Americans, and women were ahead of his times but nothing like todays. We must judge him in his context, not ours.

Despite my admiration for Washington, this book, as readers will discover, is no hagiography. George Washington was a man, not a demigod. He had flaws. He made many mistakes. The amazing thing is not that he had character flaws and made mistakes, but that despite these facts, he was able to achieve such an unmatched record of success.

America has never had a leader more important than George Washington. But for him, no single nation known as the United States of America would stretch from Atlantic to Pacific. Two seminal events characterized the founding of that nationthe winning of independence from Great Britain and the establishment of nationhoodand those two are not at all the same thing. In both of those dramatic achievements, George Washington was the central and crucial figure.

Washington or no Washington, Great Britain might not have been able to thwart the American rebellion. However, had General Washington not kept the Continental Army intact as a significant force, the empire would not have signed a formal treaty ending the war and making the new countrys western boundary the Mississippi River.

Of course, Washington had critics and adversaries but consider his record: unanimously elected commander in chief of the Continental Army, unanimously elected president of the Constitutional Convention, unanimously elected the first president of the United States, unanimously reelected president of the United States, and after his presidency unanimously nominated to be commander in chief of all forces to be raised in the quasi-war with France. No other American leader can claim to have enjoyed such popular enthusiasm.