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Washington knew how to turn himself into an impenetrable monument long before an obelisk arose in his honor in the nation’s capital.
he ranks as the most famously elusive figure in American history,
“An important element in Washington’s leadership both as a military commander and as President was his dignified, even forbidding, demeanor, his aloofness, the distance he consciously set and maintained between himself and nearly all the rest of the world.”
His real passions and often fiery opinions were typically confined to private letters rather than public utterances.
seven volumes published by Douglas Southall Freeman (1948-57) and the four volumes by James T. Flexner (1965-72).
The hypercritical mother produced a son who was overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval.
Both mother and son exhibited supreme willpower that people defied at their peril. Both were vigorous, enterprising, and exacting in their demands.
Yet in many other ways, George Washington defined himself as the antithesis of his mother. If his mother was crude and illiterate, he would improve himself through books. If she was self-centered, he would be self-sacrificing in serving his country. If she was slovenly, he would be meticulous in appearance. If she disdained fancy society, he would crave its acceptance. If she showed old-fashioned religious fervor, he would be devout in a more moderate fashion. And if she was a veteran complainer, he would be known for his stiff upper lip.
The furnace of ambition burned with a bright, steady flame inside this diligent boy.
he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp ideas.
Washington absorbed his lessons from action, not books, yet he came to own a vast library and talked about books as if he were a serious reader, not a dilettante.
He vigorously urged his horse into the freezing current, sitting upright as it glided across the water—a magnificent image repeated many times later in his career.
he had kept his composure in battle, even when surrounded by piles of corpses. He had a professional toughness and never seemed to gag at bloodshed; a born soldier, he was curiously at home with bullets whizzing about him. Even in the wilderness, there was no doubt that he would faithfully execute orders. He was always tenacious and persevering and never settled for halfway measures. Utterly fearless, he faced down dangers and seemed undeterred by obstacles.
Washington always demonstrated a capacity to learn from missteps. “Errors once discovered are more than half amended,” he liked to
say. “Some men will gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some will in ten or a dozen.”44 It was this process of subtle, silent, unrelenting self-criticism that enabled him to rise above his early defeats.
his phenomenal capacity for detail became apparent.
there was a gravitas about the young Washington, a seriousness of purpose and a fierce determination to succeed, that made him stand out in any crowd.
the complex Washington seldom had a single reason for his actions.
By the age of twenty-six, he had survived smallpox, pleurisy, malaria, and dysentery. He had not only evaded bullets but survived disease with astounding regularity.
He believed in the infinite perfectibility of Mount Vernon, as if it were a canvas that he could constantly retouch and expand. There he reigned supreme and felt secure as nowhere else.
Her industrious nature must have pleased George Washington. Both of them were early risers, used every moment profitably, and stuck to the same daily routines.
Washington’s storied self-control was not something inherited but achieved by dint of hard work, making it all the more formidable an accomplishment.
Martha’s biographer Patricia Brady,
be punctual in attendance and “hear dispassionately and determine coolly all great questions.”
Whether for business or social occasions, his punctuality was legendary, and he expected everyone to be on time.
He accorded the sundial a central spot on his mansion lawn,
Washington benefited from the unvarying regularity of his daily routine and found nothing monotonous about it. Like many thrifty farmers, he rose before sunrise and accomplished much work while others still slept. Prior to breakfast, he shuffled about in dressing gown and slippers and passed an hour or two in his library, reading and handling correspondence. He also devoted time
to private prayers before Billy Lee laid out his clothes, brushed his hair, and tied it in a queue. Washington liked to examine his stables before breakfast, inspect his horses, and issue instructions to the grooms. Then he had an unchanging breakfast of corn cakes, tea, and honey. After breakfast Washington pulled on tall black boots, mounted his horse, and began the prolonged circuit of his five farms, where he expected to find hands hard at work. Once again, he was a diligent boss, not a gentleman farmer. Each day he rode twenty miles on horseback and personally supervised field work, fence
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“I shall begrudge no reasonable expense that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my farms, for nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order and
everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them,”
The Prodigy
He was congenial without being deeply personal, friendly without being familiar, and perfected a cool sociability that distanced him from people even as it invited them closer.
He never felt the urge to impress people.
He knew the value of silence, largely kept opinions to himself, and seldom committed a faux pas.
Washington exemplified the self-invented American, forever struggling to better himself and rise above his origins.
His reserve, if not impenetrable, was by no means lightly surrendered.
“Be courteous to all but intimate with few,”
“and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth.”
“the best horseman of his age and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback,”
Washington kept his hounds kenneled down by the Potomac and developed a breed that became known
as the American foxhound.
Joseph Addison’s Cato
cinchona tree,
“No other return is expected or wished for . . . than that you will accept it with the same freedom and goodwill with which it is made and that you may not even consider it in the light of an obligation or mention it as such, for be assured that from me it will never be known.”
It is striking how moody and snappish Washington could be about money. This man who was generally so polite and courteous tended to shed all tact in business matters, the one dimension of his career unimproved by the passage of time.
he ordered 250 pieces of the tony new cream-colored earthenware produced by Josiah Wedgwood.
Potomac was “one of the finest rivers in the world—a river well stock[ed] with various kinds of fish
shad, herring, bass, carp, sturgeon,
By 1772 Mount Vernon’s fishery netted almost a million herring per year.
the events of the winter of 1768-69 converted George Washington from a rich, disaffected planter into a rabid militant against British policies.
