GEORGE WASHINGTON

A study of Washington’s political education, ambition, and leadership.

Stewart begins with the French and Indian War, during which Washington achieved his first military glory. As a colonel in the Virginia militia, he led several expeditions into the wilderness and became nationally known for bravery during Gen. Edward Braddock’s disastrous 1755 defeat. During the following years, Washington displayed much energy but little talent, and he resigned his commission in 1758 to marry “a pleasingly rich widow about his age” and live as a wealthy Virginia planter, which included serving in the state House of Burgesses. Traditionally, historians describe these civilian years (1759-1775) as the period when he developed political skills and self-mastery. “The George Washington who arrived at the First Continental Congress in 1774,” writes the author, “is almost unrecognizable compared to the man who led the Virginia regiment two decades before.” Stewart has no more success than his predecessors in explaining what happened, but this is the least known period of his life, and readers will enjoy the author’s insightful nuts-and-bolts account of his handling of the politics and infighting of local government. In the second half of the book, Stewart chronicles several “political minefields” that Washington navigated as a national figure. He kept his army intact through the miserable winter at Valley Forge while fending off a plot by more successful generals to supersede him. As president, he created a federal government from almost nothing, restored the nation’s credit, and kept it neutral in the war that followed the French Revolution, which bitterly divided the nation and subjected him to a torrent of abuse. In the author’s chapter on slavery, Washington emerges mostly unscathed—though it’s a low bar. Every slave-owning Founding Father deplored the institution and took no action, but only Washington freed his slaves in his will. All serious biographies emphasize Washington’s political genius, and Stewart, an experienced biographer as well as a good writer, accomplishes his goal.

Another straightforward life of Washington, but a fine one.