The Invention of George WashingtonBY TRACING George Washington's deliberate development from colonial planter and soldier to republican icon, Paul Longmore answers the riddle of Washington's simultaneous fame and aloofness, arriving at a portrait of Washington as a self-fashioning representative of his turbulent time. As a young Virginia planter, Washington aspired to virtues associated with the colonial gentry, but as the British system of patronage threatened his own ambitions, he adopted the radical Whig patriotism that would lead him to take up arms. As a national hero of the Revolutionary War, and in accepting the presidency, Washington defended civilian control of the military and other ideals of republican government because his own image was inextricably tied to their success. The Invention of George Washington, first published in hardcover in 1988, explores the character of our first president in modern terms, but as Longmore shows, Washington's assiduous cultivation of his own public image does not ultimately diminish his extraordinary achievements as general and statesman. |
Contents
The Country of His Fathers | 1 |
Honour and Glory | 17 |
The chief part of my happiness | 25 |
The service done merits reward | 34 |
Be distinguished from the common run | 46 |
I deal little in Politics | 56 |
A free mind | 68 |
Some thing shoud be done | 86 |
To excite others by our Example | 137 |
Can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice? | 147 |
Partiallity assisted by a political motive | 160 |
Something charming in the conduct of Washington | 171 |
God Save Great Washington God Damn the King | 184 |
The hearts of his countrymen | 202 |
The foundations of useful knowledge | 213 |
Abbreviations | 227 |
A rising Empire | 101 |
Is anything to be expected from petitioning? | 111 |
There is no relief but in their distress | 123 |
305 | |
Acknowledgments | 319 |