Biography/American History: In his preface to this book, a tight, informative biography of America's first president, the author makes you wonder why you should be reading it at all, writes Eoin McVey.
George Washington, he writes, was not as wise as Benjamin Franklin, not as intellectual as Jefferson, not as well read as Adams nor as politically astute as Madison. Later, he points out that Washington was arrogant, aloof, sulky and a liar. In fact, from a social perspective, he was close to virtueless.
Yet, for all his faults, he was elected unanimously to the post of president twice (the electorate in 1789 consisted of just 69 delegates, 132 in 1792) and was acknowledged by the other founding fathers as their unquestioned superior. The "Foundingest Father of them all", says the author.
Washington was a fourth-generation Virginian whose forebears originated in England. His father died when he was just 11 years old, leaving his mother with seven children, 10,000 acres and 49 slaves. Washington's education finished in his mid-teens, "a deficiency that haunted him throughout his subsequent career among statesmen with more robust educational credentials".
However, this deficiency made not a whit of difference to his progress. After a few years as a surveyor, at the age of 20 and with no soldiering experience whatsoever, he applied for a post in the Virginia militia. Family connections got him appointed as a major and he spent the next five years protecting his majesty's loyal subjects in the western reaches of the colony.
He rose quickly, but not without controversy, to become commander of the Virginia Regiment at the age of only 23. He became fixated on a combination of detail and discipline. Drunkenness in the regiment could land the offender with 1,000 lashes; desertion, even for those who returned voluntarily, was met with hanging.
Washington was certainly courageous - even reckless - with his life, but not particularly competent, and he argued with colleagues and political masters alike, often when he was in the wrong. He resigned his commission at the age of 26 to marry and settle down.
Martha Dandridge Custis was a catch. She was the wealthiest widow in Virginia with an estate of 18,000 acres. Washington had resolute social ambitions and even wrote out for himself the 110 precepts from "The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation", rules of etiquette composed by Jesuit scholars. The author details two of the rules to give readers a flavour of the etiquette required. "Spit not into the fire . . . especially if there be meat before it" and "Kill no vermin or fleas, lice, ticks, etc in the sight of others".
Washington had courted other eligible women (all considerably wealthier than him) and with marriage to Martha followed the male tradition in his family of making sure he married up. Martha wasn't the love of his life. That was Sally, who was unfortunately off-limits, being married to his best friend George Fairfax.
Washington took to running his own Mount Vernon lands and the Custis estates with great attention to commercial realities, constantly arguing with suppliers and customers about prices. He, like many Virginian tobacco farmers, had heavy debts which he could not seem to clear, regardless of how good the harvest was. This could be put down, as the author points out, to the inherent difficulties of growing tobacco, with its unique capacity to diminish the fertility of the soil. Washington, however, liked to think it was the requirement to trade with London merchants that handicapped him.
So when, in 1765, parliament imposed a direct tax on the colonies, the Stamp Act, other colonists complained about taxation and representation but Washington merely decided that economic independence was long overdue. And that, rather than any revolutionary instincts, drove him back into uniform. When war with England broke out, Washington was chosen to command the Continental (ie, the colonists') Army.
WASHINGTON PROVED A resourceful and successful general. With the war won, he retired to his estates but, following the chaos of the Articles of Confederation, was called upon to lead the Constitutional Convention and try and save national unity. That, with him in mind, succeeded in framing a presidency which he accepted with some reluctance, given that he was then 57 and all his male relations had died young.
He was a good president, not a great one. He got the Bill of Rights passed but did nothing for slaves or Native Americans, despite having much sympathy for both causes. The unity of the nation had to come first.
Washington regarded slavery as a moral anachronism and favoured gradual emancipation. However, while individual states could make their own decisions, he rejected any federal abolition for fear that some states might secede. And neither did he move to free his own slaves, a decision that the author puts down to financial considerations.
Washington did not regard Native Americans as savages but as formidable adversaries fighting for their independence - "in effect, behaving pretty much as he would do in their place". He decided to create several sovereign Native American "homelands" which would be bypassed by the huge westward surge of settlers. However, individual states had other ideas, particularly Georgia, which sold 15 million acres on its western border to speculators. In the end, Washington found himself sending military expeditions into the west to put down Native American uprisings, even though he knew the real culprits were white vigilante groups who were determined to provoke hostilities. Within 40 years the Native Americans had either been forcibly removed or slaughtered.
Joseph Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize- winning author, and his portrait of Thomas Jefferson won the National Book Award in the US. This study of Washington is comprehensive, despite its shortness, and highly readable, all the more so for not sparing the subject's faults and weaknesses.
The title stems from the discussion when first elected on how he should be addressed. John Adams suggested "His Elective Majesty" or "His Mightiness". The senate eventually decided that the president should just be called the president, nothing more and nothing less.
Typographers may be interested to know that the typeface used in the book is an adaptation of the one designed by William Caslon 300 years ago, which was deployed in the first copies of the Declaration of Independence.
Eoin McVey is a managing editor of The Irish Times
His Excellency: George Washington. By Joseph J Ellis, Faber and Faber, 323pp. £20