Monumental Man: His Excellency, by Joseph J. Ellis

Review by Bruce Collier March 24, 2005 Issue

Americans have put George Washington’s name on almost everything, and his face on everything else. From the nation’s capital to the dollar bill, our first president’s name and image are probably the most recognizable icons we have, suitable for every sacred and profane use.

Despite all this, argues Joseph J. Ellis, many of us don’t know the first fact about the man he calls “the Foundingest Father of them all.” Lest that make you feel unpatriotic or just plain ignorant, Ellis adds that you are not alone. Of all the great figures of the American Revolution and the fledgling years of the republic, Washington is perhaps the least understood. Nor has there been any rush to alter this, he says: “...the reigning orthodoxy in the academy regards Washington as either a taboo or an inappropriate subject....”

Nevertheless, Washington’s most distinguished contemporaries, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, all “acknowledged that Washington was their unquestioned superior.” Their reason for thinking this is the subject of His Excellency, Joseph J. Ellis’s sixth historical book, and his fourth about “the Revolutionary generation.”

The book is divided into seven chapters. Ellis starts with a bang, dropping us in on a 21-year-old Washington, serving the British royal governor of Virginia as a messenger in enemy (i.e. French and Indian) territory. In this and subsequent chapters, we see Washington in action, as soldier, landed squire, general, and president. He makes and survives several military blunders, fights, surveys, explores, and writes about it. He watches as various family members die around him, and finally makes a highly advantageous marriage to wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis. Marriage to Martha gave Washington land and status. He would spend much of the rest of his life acquiring and consolidating wealth, and would die one of the wealthiest men in America.

After every incident, Ellis analyzes Washington’s actions, reactions, and resolutions. He bases his conclusions on Washington’s own correspondence and official papers, as well as contemporary accounts, including those in British and American newspapers. The character that emerges is that of a thoroughly self-made man, deeply aware of his place in history.

Washington reflected carefully on every stroke of fortune or misfortune, and plunged ahead doggedly in every area of his life. With even less formal education than Benjamin Franklin, Washington was a genuine graduate of the school of hard knocks. By the time the American colonies revolted, his military reputation, based as much on hands-on experience as anything else, made him the unanimous choice to lead the new Continental Army.

As a military leader, Ellis frankly says that Washington “lost more battles than he won; indeed, he lost more battles than any victorious general in modern history.” What made him successful was his own character. Whenever he lost, he regrouped, learned from his errors, and kept on. In addition to that, says Ellis, Washington simply knew that his was the winning side. His utter certainty of victory made him “the primal symbol of American independence.” Once the war was won, that same character made him the equally odds-on choice for the presidency.

Washington received all 69 electoral votes, the only American president to get such a mandate. Ellis notes, as have other Washington biographers, that he could have made himself king. It would not have been difficult. He had the loyalty of the army and most of its officers. Many in America thought a native-born monarch was a good idea. Washington did not. Considering the number of successful revolutionaries that have yielded to such temptation—Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Castro, Mao—this becomes even more remarkable.

Washington’s presidency was possibly the most important chapter in American history. It was literally a case of making it up as he went along, with the whole world looking over his shoulder. Had Washington not been a man of great self-restraint, had he been more covetous of power (like Hamilton, for example), and had he been less desirous of getting back to Mount Vernon to look after his land, things might have been very different. As it is, every succeeding president, from Adams forward, has had to tread warily in the use of great, but largely unspecified, power. Washington deserves much of the credit for that.

As history books go, His Excellency is a short work, and a fairly quick read. Ellis paints in broad strokes, directing the reader to the many books already written about his subject, notably the voluminous Papers of George Washington. It has taken some time to get George away from the cherry tree (a complete fiction, says Ellis) and off the pedestal. Even so, the man has earned his monument.

His Excellency, Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pages, available at online and local booksellers and local libraries.

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