His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known.”7 Prudent, considerate, careful, determined, honest, and inflexible: Jefferson did not quite say so, but he was describing Washington as the American Cato, the eighteenth century’s embodiment of virtue, the very ideal of what a public man should be. Even people who might not know anything about Cato would recognize these as the traits expected of great public men.
