Growing up, Washington had been fiercely ambitious, concerned with making money and gaining fame.
But it’s Washington’s outstanding performances - not his sharp-minded ideas - that we celebrate. And his writing that New York City was the “fountain of all intelligence” likewise has a ring of truth about it. His description of Valley Forge as being “little less than a famine” sounds exactly right. Not that Washington didn’t have his way with words. Washington, by contrast, was all about consensus-building, operating above the fray, being the North Star in a galaxy all his own. “Opacity was his means of enhancing his power and influencing events.”Īll the other so-called Founding Fathers - Benjamin Franklin,, John Adams and the rest - glittered in print or public forum, finding value in winning debates and settling scores. “Where other founders gloried in displays of intellect, Washington’s strategy was the opposite: the less people knew about him, the more he thought he could accomplish,” Chernow writes. Though Douglas Southall Freeman, for my money, still owns the franchise in Washington studies with his magisterial seven-volume biography (written between 19), never before has Washington been rendered so tangibly in such a smart, tenaciously researched volume as Chernow’s opus. Rockefeller, Chernow displays a breadth of knowledge about Washington that is nothing short of phenomenal. A Brooklyn native best known for his brilliant studies of Alexander Hamilton and John D. All these qualities come bursting forth in Chernow’s “Washington: A Life,” an epic, cradle-to-grave biography destined to win a slew of book awards. Cultivating aloofness as his political sword, the 6-foot-2-inch Washington owned any room he entered. Until his last breath, Washington epitomized self-control, sterling judgment, old-fashioned civility and noblesse oblige. “I thank you for your attentions, but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Terms agreed-upon, Washington smiled contentedly. Seeking no religious comfort or last rites, Washington’s only deathbed request was that he not be buried until three days after his expiration he feared consciousness while being underground. But the poised manner of Washington is a gold-star example of a brave life lived with honor. There are many ways to measure greatness. “Though he never complained,” biographer Ron Chernow recounts of those last hours, “Washington was expiring in a particularly gruesome fashion and constantly gasped for air.” Washington may have defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, but an inflamed epiglottis got the best of him in 1799.
In fact, Washington had contracted a vicious bacterial infection. The ex-president, his doctors believed, was suffering from “quinsy” (a throat inflammation). Sixty-seven-year-old George Washington was dying. 14, 1799, an ominous, fog-like gloom hung over Mount Vernon.
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