Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

The idea that abolition could be deferred to some future date when it would be carried out by cleanly incremental legislative steps was a common fantasy among the founders, since it shifted the burden onto later generations.

For Washington, the beauty of the document was that it charted a path for its own evolution. Its very brevity and generality—it contained fewer than eight thousand words—meant it would be a constantly changing document, susceptible to shifting interpretations.

In sallying forth to command the troops, Washington, sixty-two, became the first and only American president ever to supervise troops in a combat situation.