Both admirers and detractors have invented myths about our first president. A famous biographer tells of his years spent trying to separate fact from fiction.
George Washington’s Narrow Escapes
The Unknown Alexander Hamilton
Painter to the Federalist aristocracy, Stuart created likenesses of leading citizens with great brilliance and exactitude.
WASHINGTON AFTER THE REVOLUTION: IV As the very first President, Washington had to invent his own job. What about a cabinet? How do you “advise” with tiresome senators? Should you have slaves in the executive mansion? How do you deal with all those uninvited visitors? And with the Vice President—especially when you know that he is terribly jealous?
Washington’s journey to his inauguration resembled a triumphal procession of royalty, but he felt like “a culprit who is going to the place of his execution”
After the Revolution, Washington returned to farming at Mount Vernon but eventually called for that he wished a “Convention of the People” to establish a “Federal Constitution”
Just before Christmas of 1783, General George Washington returned to Mount Vernon and looked forward to spending his remaining years at his favorite occupation, that of a Virginia country gentleman.
Mortally ill as his century dwindled to its close, Washington was helped to his grave by physicians who clung to typical eighteenth-century remedies. But he died as nobly as he had lived
“Whom can we trust now?” cried out General Washington when he discovered his friend’s “villainous perfidy.”
Had a tempest not thwarted his plans, George Washington might have lost the Revolution in the first major operation he commanded
In an age when art radiated nothing hut light and optimism, this self-taught painter from Pittsburgh saw another, more somber side of American life
In the rural scenes and native landscapes of William Sidney Mount a naive young America saw itself reflected to the life
Fort Stanwix was doomed—until the Iroquois heard the ravings of Hon Yost Schuyler
