Washington: A Life

by Ron Chernow

“By the bye,” he wrote to Washington, “in the melancholy situation to which the poor King of England has been reduced, there were, I am told, in relation to you, some whimsical circumstances.” In a deranged fit, wrote Morris, the king had “conceived himself to be no less a personage than George Washington at the head of the American Army.

governeur morris quote

John Adams said that if Washington “was not the greatest president, he was the best actor of the presidency we have ever had.”