Happy New Year! I hope that everyone's holdiday seasons went well and that the return to "normal" life was relatively painless. Now that I am back from all my travels I really have no excuse now not to continue on with my project. I decided that it was high time that we metaphorically laid George Washington to rest. So here are my final thoughts on the book and its topic.
My thoughts on this book are two-fold. First, I enjoyed reading it. Joseph Ellis is an erudite scholar which, while giving his book a thesis paper feel, does not hurt the overall effect of readability by the public. His command of English vocabulary is truly exceptional and though he assumes a lecturing tone at times, I could really tell the genuine interest for his subject behind it. For instance, Ellis’ reason for choosing to write a book on George Washington is masterly. “It seemed to me that Benjamin Franklin was wiser than Washington; Alexander Hamilton was more brilliant; John Adams was better read; Thomas Jefferson was more intellectually sophisticated; James Madison was more politically astute. Yet each and all of these prominent figures acknowledged that Washington was their unquestioned superior. Within the gallery of greats so often mythologized and capitalized as Founding Fathers, Washington was recognized as primus inter pares, the Foundingest Father of them all. Why was that? In the pages that follow I have looked for an answer, which lies buried within the folds of the most ambitious, determined, and potent personality of an age not lacking for worthy rivals. How he became that way, and what he then did with it, is the story I try to tell” (p. xiv). I did not sense a definitive bias from Joseph Ellis regarding Washington. He lets Washington speak for himself, little though he does that, even when the motives are less than altruistic or just plain contradicting. The number of direct sources from Washington probably proved frustrating but Ellis works deftly around this gap by using copious sources from various contemporary peers of Washington and the research that has been done since.
Secondly, I still have a hard time picturing George Washington, the man. Although I really believe that this is not the fault of the author but due mainly to the scanty surviving sources written by Washington himself. Washington, apparently, always had a view towards the future and his place in posterity and thus limited what he put in writing. Also he directed Martha to burn all their personal correspondence after his death—which she complied with. I really feel that being able to read the letters between him and his wife would have shed a more humane light on the Father of Our Nation. All that being said I have learned a new respect for George Washington and that immense impact that he had on the birth of our nation. Even if he wasn’t the smartest or the most intellectual or best dresser, Washington had something indefinable, something that allowed all the men around him to trust him implicitly. And I feel so blessed to have a man like this around when we so desperately needed him.
Here are some people that I will like to follow up with later:
Alexander Hamilton
John Jay
Martha Washington
Lafayette
John Rutledge of South Carolina
John Hancock
No comments:
Post a Comment