Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

his library included volumes of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Milton, and Oliver Goldsmith, as well as Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary.

For his eclectic postwar reading he had lined up Voltaire’s Letters to Several of His Friends, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Showing a decided biographical bent, he ordered lives of Charles XII of Sweden, Louis XV of France, and Peter the Great of Russia. Apparently still hoping to make a trip to France, he ordered a French dictionary and grammar, although he showed little aptitude for foreign languages and made no discernible headway.

Someone else of Washington’s Olympian stature might have simply ignored unsolicited letters, but with his innate courtesy, he replied dutifully to all of them,

“Rather than quarrel about territory, let the poor, the needy, and oppressed of the earth . . . resort to the fertile plains of our western country, to the second land of promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment.”

declaring during the Revolution that there was “no finer country in the known world than is encircled by the Ohio, Mississippi, and Great Lakes.”

Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country, but I despair of seeing it.”

Lincoln

George Washington refused to appoint anyone to the new government who had been overtly hostile to the Constitution that brought it into being.

Any student of Washington’s life might have predicted that he would acknowledge his election in a short, self-effacing speech, loaded with disclaimers.

“I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of inquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.”

With an excellent memory for names, Washington seldom required a second introduction.

Washington never shook hands, holding on to a sword or a hat to avoid direct contact with people.

“I am not afraid to die and therefore can bear the worst,” he told Bard evenly. “Whether tonight, or twenty years hence, makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence.”

In June 1789 some congressmen wanted Washington to have to gain senatorial approval to fire as well as hire executive officers—the Constitution was silent on the subject; the House duly approved that crippling encroachment on executive authority. When the Senate vote ended in a tie, Vice President Adams cast the deciding vote to defeat the measure, thereby permitting the president to exert true leadership over his cabinet and, for better or worse, preventing the emergence of a parliamentary democracy.

The criteria he valued most were merit, seniority, loyalty to the Constitution, and wartime service, as well as an equitable distribution of jobs among the states.

much, pondered much; resolved slowly, resolved surely.”45 By delaying decisions, he made sure that his better judgment prevailed over his temper. At the same time, once decisions were made, they “were seldom, if ever, to be shaken,” wrote John Marshall.46 Jefferson agreed, saying that Washington’s mind was “slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.”

Washington “possesses the two great requisites of a statesman, the faculty of concealing his own sentiments, and of discovering those of other men.”

“where there is no occasion for expressing an opinion, it is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.”

honesty will be found, on every experiment, the best policy.’”

With this stroke, he endorsed an expansive view of the presidency and made the Constitution a living, open-ended document.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth,” Washington remarked to Madison in 1788. “The checks [the king] endeavors to give it . . . will, more than probably, kindle a flame which may not easily be extinguished, tho[ugh] for a while it may be smothered by the armies at his command.”

In October 1792 he told Gouverneur Morris that he regretted that newspapers exaggerated political discontent in the country, but added that “this kind of representation is an evil w[hi]ch must be placed in opposition to the infinite benefits resulting from a free press.”

Washington did not respond publicly to criticism at first, having once said that “to persevere in one’s duty and be silent is the best answer to calumny.”

the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”

“We will not be dictated to by the politics of any nation under heaven farther than treaties require of us . . . If we are to be told by a foreign power . . . what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have independence yet to seek.”22

“select the most deserving only for your friendships, and, before this becomes intimate, weigh their dispositions and character well.”

“The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”