George Washington
George Washington is by far the most important figure in the history of the United States. Against all military odds, he liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire and presided over the process to produce and ratify a Constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. In two terms as president, he set that Constitution to work with such success that, by the time he finally retired, America was well on its way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on earth.Despite his importance, Washington remains today a distant figure to many Americans. Previous books about him are immensely long, multivolume, and complicated. Paul Johnson has now produced a brief life that presents a vivid portrait of the great man as young warrior, masterly commander-in-chief, patient Constitution maker, and exceptionally wise president. He also shows Washington as a farmer of unusual skill and an entrepreneur of foresight, patriarch of an extended family, and proprietor of one of the most beautiful homes in America, which he largely built and adorned.Trenchant and original as ever, Johnson has given us a brilliant, sharply etched portrait of this iconic figure -- both as a hero and as a man.
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There can be little doubt that Washington was an immensely influential figure during the formation of the United States, and that his strategic skill in war combined with, at the very least, the great respect afforded to him in affairs of state, were instrumental in the early success of the nascent nation. Johnson, however, in this biography, fails to do the great man justice.
It may be a pet peeve of mine not shared by others, but I found Johnson's relations of events and people to be distasteful and sometimes abhorrent, as they were nearly all positively dripping with his own bias. No event or action could simply have taken place in Johnson's view; instead, everything carried moral significance and reflected greatly on his caricature of the actors involved.
It's clear from early on that Johnson is no fan of Thomas Jefferson or his decentralized “anti-federalist” cohorts. He repeatedly attacks Jefferson throughout the narrative of Washington's life, even going so far as to call Jefferson a “coward” because of his lifelong battle with migraines. All of this could be written off as a simple and typical hagiography, though, if Johnson's prose weren't dull, repetitive and poorly edited.
Many events and personages are described superficially, without putting them into their greater context or diving at all into details that would explain otherwise strange situations. Inconsistencies in position range throughout the hagiography, too, with Johnson mostly praising Washington's genius, but often clumsily defending, obscuring or omitting issues more difficult to explain. Then, at the end, Johnson almost turns on Washington before re-printing in full Washington's mostly content-free and carefully couched farewell address, which Johnson thinks is more important and relevant to modern schoolchildren than the Declaration of Independence. I respectfully disagree, and I encourage Johnson to find a new editor before embarking on his next twist of history.