Book Review: His Excellency George Washington

• Author: Lieutenant Colonel Robin Johnson
• Pages: 06

HIS EXCELLENCY GEORGE WASHINGTON1

REVIEWED BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBIN JOHNSON2

Land baron. Slave holder. Revolutionary. General of the Continental Army. Father of his country. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph J. Ellis' recent Washington biography brilliantly describes how Washington's character in the context of his circumstances drove him to be all these things and more. Our first president was in a large part driven to revolution by his appreciation of the value of land. On a personal level, he was driven by his belief that the British were trying to purloin land from him following the French and Indian War.3 On a grander scale, he believed that the future of America lay to the west, beyond the Allegheny Mountains.4 These beliefs and all the driving forces that made Washington "the most ambitious, determined, and potent personality of an age not lacking for worthy rivals"5 are the raw material for Ellis' superb work, His Excellency George Washington.

In His Excellency, Ellis states his twofold goal for the book: first, "to write a modest-sized book about a massive historic subject,"6 and second, to explore the driving internal forces and the forces externally

present in the American revolutionary era that created the man famously eulogized as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."7 Ellis accomplishes both of his goals admirably. At a mere 275 pages, His Excellency is, indeed, a "modest-sized book."8 Yet, the compactness of the work is both a great strength and, ironically, a source of weakness. At its strength, His Excellency avoids the pitfalls of certain predecessor Washington biographies, namely those by Douglas Southall Freeman9 and James Thomas Flexner,10 which he implicitly describes by quoting Lytton Strachey's comment on the subject of Victorian biographies as "interminable tomes that had become an endless row of verbal coffins."11 Ellis, after reading the entire Washington Papers compilation,12 condensed this extraordinary amount material into a highly readable book. He successfully presents only that information which provides fascinating insights into Washington's character and leadership style. He describes how the events of Washington's day shaped the man and how the man helped shape several momentous events in American history. Ellis' capacity for distilling such an enormous amount of raw information into an engaging informative narrative is truly one of his strongest literary assets.

At its weak points, the natural path of Ellis' narrative leads the reader to segue down a secondary avenue, but Ellis terminates any such side trips with a "not the subject of this book" attitude. For example, Ellis addresses the Marquis de Lafayette, aside from factual recitations concerning Lafayette's conduct in battle,13 only in so far as his relationship with Washington is concerned.14 Ellis declines to address how Lafayette, a Frenchman, came to volunteer in the Continental Army,15 how Lafayette later found himself imprisoned in Austria in the course of the French Revolution,16 or his additional contributions to the

young nation.17 In light of the lifelong friendship between the two men,18 additional insight into Lafayette's motivations and character would lend further insight into Washington's. Additionally, there were some matters in which Washington's views and the views of Washington's peers significantly differed which Ellis briefly discussed. Occasionally, a detour to survey these differences more closely would have contributed to a deeper understanding of Washington's perspective. For example, Ellis mentions George Washington's and Thomas Jefferson's disparate views of the French revolution, but he does not adequately address how their views differed, or, more importantly, why.19

Ellis also accomplishes his goal of presenting the internal and external forces that impacted Washington. Two important events, early in Washington's life, shaped the man that he would become-the man who would shape defining events in the revolutionary era. The first of these events is the premature death, at age thirty-four, of his half-brother, Lawrence Washington, in 1752.20 Ellis notes Lawrence's death as producing, in Ellis' opinion, what was Washington's "greatest legacy," Mount Vernon.21 More importantly, however, Lawrence's death created a vacancy in the adjutancy corps of the Virginia militia and thus began the military career of the future Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.22

The second key event in his early life was his marriage to Martha Dandridge Curtis, an extraordinarily wealthy widow.23 Washington's marriage to Martha propelled Washington into the upper social echelons of the Virginia planter class.24 At the time of the union, the Mount Vernon estate was a mere 3,000 acres;25 the Curtis estate, on the other hand, encompassed three plantations on 18,000 acres of prime tobacco land, worked by more than 200 slaves.26 Being a member of the colonial landed class shaped Washington's views toward English rule more than any other factor. His dealings with the mercantile system,27 his belief that the English were trying to rob him of land rightly awarded to him for his service in the French and Indian War,28 and the English oppression in the form of the Stamp Act,29 the Townsend Act30 and the "Intolerable Acts"31 inspired Washington to independence. Ellis convincingly advocates the case that Washington's was not an ideological or social revolution, but an economic one.

Lawrence's premature death and the resulting vacancy in the Virginia militia were remarkable strokes of fate. Washington earlier had applied for a position in the militia but had no military qualifications to recommend him.32 It is too easy to play "what if;" however, if Lawrence had not married into the influential Fairfax family,33 and if Lawrence had not held a position in the militia,34 and if he had not died prematurely,35 if Washington had not happened to petition for a billet shortly before Lawrence's death,36 and if William Fairfax had not supported his application, in spite of his lack of qualification37 - if all these things had not converged in the summer of 1752, the future Command in Chief might well have spent the War of Independence safely ensconced in

Mount Vernon, cheering for a successful insurgency in the interests of his pocketbook.

But, of course, all these events did converge and Mister Washington became Major Washington.38 Military service drew out and polished Washington's natural leadership abilities. A significant portion of His Excellency is devoted to Washington's service in the French and Indian War and the War of Independence.39 This emphasis is remarkable in light of the fact that Washington's other accomplishments include chairing the Constitutional Convention and nursing the nation through its infancy with stunning success as its first President. However...