John Reeves
7 Essential Books on Ulysses S. Grant
7 Essential Books on Ulysses S. Grant
John Reeves
7 Essential Books on the Civil War
7 Essential Books on the Civil War
John Reeves
Five Myths about Ulysses S. Grant

Later, there would be false rumors of drinking and accusations of incompetence. When the Rebels attacked early that Sunday morning on April 6, 1862, they found the Union troops under Major General Ulysses S. Grant unprepared.

Five Myths about Ulysses S. Grant

Book Review: ‘Soldier of Destiny’ Review: A Mystery to Himself

“In 1857, three years before Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, two idle military men destined to face each other in the Civil War could be found managing the property—including enslaved human beings—of their respective fathers-in-law. By 1863 they would be managing vast armies fighting over the fate of the nation.”

‘Soldier of Destiny’ Review: A Mystery to Himself - WSJ

7 Essential Books on Ulysses S. Grant

The birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant, 1822

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant. Below are seven essential books to commemorate this important milestone in American history:

1.  The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Grant’s memoirs might be the finest that have ever been written by a president. One historian, who has been critical of Grant, said of the memoirs, “There is conciseness, totality, and strength, but what is perhaps most striking is the timeless quality of the prose. It has classical force.”

A poet has described Grant’s writing as “fatless prose.” Upon taking command of the Union Army, Grant wrote General Meade, “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” The writing here is remarkable for its clarity.

The recent edition of Grant's memoirs from the team at the Grant library at Mississippi State is now THE gold standard. Every Grant enthusiast must own this edition.

2.  Grant by Ron Chernow
Many readers might learn about Grant for the first time by reading Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of the United States general. Currently our most successful biographer, Chernow is a fine writer, who presents a sensible and balanced view of Grant. For more on this compelling book, you can read my review of it.

3.  Grant by William McFeely
The late William McFeely won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Grant. It’s well-written and based on impressive archival research.

Lovers of Grant might be disappointed, however. McFeely is extremely critical of the general and two-term president. He writes, “I am convinced that Ulysses S. Grant had no organic, artistic, or intellectual specialness.” McFeely also believes Grant was a butcher who didn’t value the lives of his men highly enough. Alas, McFeely never proposes what alternatives were available to Grant. Was it really possible for Grant to defeat Lee, while keeping casualties down?

4.  A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant by Albert D. Richardson
Published in 1868, the journalist Albert Deane Richardson wrote one of the earliest and best biographies of Grant. A contemporary of the general during the Civil War, Richardson interviewed hundreds of Grant’s associates and family members. This book is particularly strong on Grant’s private life. Sadly, Richardson was eventually killed by a jealous husband of a woman he was having an affair with.

5.  Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character by Hamlin Garland
Garland was a popular 19th century writer who wrote a one-volume account of Grant’s life. The book was based on extensive interviews with soldiers and family members who knew Grant well. These interviews, conducted many years after the events in question, are handled carefully by Garland. Anyone who wants to study Grant seriously should read Garland’s biography.

6.   U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth by Joan Waugh
Waugh asks the important question, “Why did Grant’s star shine so brightly for Americans of his own day, and why has it been eclipsed so completely for Americans since at least the mid-twentieth century?” The first half of this book is about Grant’s life and accomplishments. The second half is about how we remember him. This work seems particularly relevant right now as we try to reevaluate Civil War personalities.

7. Captain Sam Grant by Lloyd Lewis
This is the best account of Grant’s early life, covering his youth and pre-Civil War Army career. There’s also excellent material here on Grant’s father, Jesse Root Grant. This outstanding narrative concludes with Colonel Grant taking command of his regiment in 1861.

John Reeves is the author of A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. He’s also currently working on a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

The First Military Burials at Arlington National Cemetery

The site of the first burials at Arlington National Cemetery, June 1864. Image: National Archives.

The site of the first burials at Arlington National Cemetery, June 1864. Image: National Archives.

The creation of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia occurred immediately after one of the worst days of violence and horror in American history.

On May 12, 1864, during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant engaged in bloody combat with Confederate forces commanded by Robert E. Lee for almost 24 hours. At the western tip of Lee’s fortifications—forever remembered as the Bloody Angle—the contest was particularly murderous. A reporter for the New York Times wrote, “In this angle of death the dead and wounded rebels lie, this morning, literally in piles—men in the agonies of death groaning beneath the dead bodies of comrades.” The fighting at Lee’s fortifications began at 4:35 a.m. on Thursday, May 12 and finally ended around 3 a.m. on Friday, May 13. Later that Friday, roughly 65 miles away in Arlington, Virginia, the first two Union soldiers would be buried at a new cemetery on the estate where Robert E. Lee and his family had lived prior to the war.

Earlier in the war, deceased Union soldiers were buried at the cemetery at the Old Soldiers’ Home a site three miles north of the White House in Washington, D.C. By May 1864, roughly 8,000 soldiers had been buried at this asylum. President Abraham Lincoln had access to a cottage on the grounds of the Old Soldiers’ Home, and spent considerable time there from 1862 to 1864. On May 13, 1864, however, the cemetery at the Old Soldiers’ Home had reached capacity and “the Secretary of War directed that a new site be selected on Lee’s farm, at Arlington, Va.”

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs previously agreed that Arlington—an 1,100-acre estate situated across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital—would become the New National Military Cemetery, where soldiers who died in Washington area hospitals would be buried in the aftermath of the Wilderness Campaign. A graduate of West Point, Montgomery C. Meigs had worked and socialized with Robert E. Lee before the war. The efficient and talented quartermaster general became a bitter foe of all secessionists once the fighting began, however.

The first two burials at Arlington took place on May 13, 1864, the exact day the Soldiers’ Home cemetery had filled up. There would be six more burials on May 14, 1864. By the end of June 1864, there were 2,600 Union soldiers interred at Arlington. In her classic book Reveille in Washington, Margaret Leech wrote, “The cemetery at Soldiers’ Home was full, and at Arlington fresh graves began to blot the green acres which surrounded the mansion of Robert E. Lee. While death rattled across the Long Bridge, every incoming steamer carried its consignment of corpses.”

Below are more details on the first eight burials at Arlington National Cemetery. All of the first graves at Arlington were dug by one of Lee’s former slaves, Jim Parks, who would later recall the spot where, as Grant’s campaign continued, “coffins had been piled in long rows like cordwood.” Parks was also a young man at the time just like the soldiers he buried. Each of the early graves received a pine headboard, painted white with black writing. Later headboards would be replaced with marble gravestones.

The list of first burials at Arlington. Image: National Archives.

The list of first burials at Arlington. Image: National Archives.

MAY 13, 1864

 

Private William Christman, 67th Pennsylvania Infantry
The first burial at Arlington, on an especially unlucky Friday the 13th, was of Private William Christman of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry. Christman, a farm laborer during peacetime like so many Civil War soldiers, was only twenty years old. He had enlisted on March 25, 1864, but never saw combat. On May 1, he was diagnosed with the measles; he died on May 11 at Lincoln General Hospital in Washington, D.C. While Christman had been in the hospital, his regiment, the 67th Pennsylvania, had been outflanked on the early evening of May 6 during the waning hours of the Battle of the Wilderness, while serving as part of Brigadier General Truman Seymour’s brigade.

Image: by author.

Image: by author.

Private William McKinney, 17th Pennsylvania Cavalry
The second burial on May 13, Private William McKinney, also died of illness. This isn’t surprising. Soldiers were two times more likely to die of an illness than from a battlefield wound, during the Civil War. McKinney had been admitted to an Alexandria, Virginia, hospital with a diagnosis of pneumonia, and died on May 12, 1864. A former sawmill worker, McKinney joined the 17th Pennsylvania Cavalry on March 16, 1864. He was only seventeen years old. It’s very likely that William’s father, John D. McKinney, attended the funeral at Arlington.

Image: by author.

Image: by author.

MAY 14, 1864

Private William Blatt, 49th Pennsylvania Infantry
Blatt was mortally wounded during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 10, 1864. While participating in Colonel Emory Upton’s famous assault, Blatt was shot in the head. Still alive, he was transported to Washington, D.C., but eventually died at the Sixth Street Wharf, before he could be taken to Armory Square Hospital. More than half of Private Blatt’s regiment suffered casualties during the attack on May 10. Today, Blatt is remembered as the first battlefield casualty to be interred at our preeminent national cemetery.

Image: by author.

Image: by author.

Private William Reeves, 76th New York Infantry
Within moments of the beginning of Grant’s Overland Campaign on May 5, 1864, a Minie ball tore through Reeves’ left cheek and exited his right cheek. He was eventually transported to Washington, D.C., and admitted to Stanton General Hospital on May 11. Just one day later, Reeves suffered a secondary hemorrhage. Surgery proved unsuccessful and Reeves died of exhaustion at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, May 13, eight days after he had been shot in the Wilderness. He was only nineteen years old. I write about the experiences of Private William Reeves, during and after the Battle of the Wilderness, in my book A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.

Image: by author.

Image: by author.

Private Peter Rawson, 1st New Jersey Infantry
Rawson, who came from a poor family, was marked “absent, sick” by his unit on March 25, 1864. He died in Carver Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Private William Starks, 5th New York Cavalry
Starks was eighteen when he enlisted on March 30, 1864 in New York. According to regimental records, he died at Camp Stoneman in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 1864.

Private William Gibbons, 5th Michigan Infantry
Gibbons enlisted at age thirty at Pontiac, Michigan, on February 4, 1864 and joined his unit at Camp Bullock, near Brandy Station, Virginia, on March 9, 1864. He died of disease on April 22, 1864 at Lincoln Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Henry Smith, Civilian Employee, Quartermaster General’s Office
Smith had been working as a teamster before his death on May 14, 1864.

SECTION 27

Section 27 today. Image: by author.

Section 27 today. Image: by author.

The first burials at Arlington, at the far northeast corner of the estate—in what became known as Section 27—would soon become the site where African American civilians and soldiers were buried. Quartermaster General Meigs would demand that white soldiers be buried closer to the Lee mansion in the future. By mid-1867, there were 3,450 African Americans buried in Section 27. Only a relative handful of white soldiers—Christman, McKinney, Blatt, Reeves, and the others listed above—remained alongside them.

7 Essential Books on the Civil War

Lincoln II.jpg

William Faulkner once wrote,

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet…

He’s, of course, referring to Pickett’s charge — General Robert E. Lee’s “desperate gamble” — on the third day of the battle of Gettysburg. Neither side knew it at the time, but the Union victory at Gettysburg probably decided the war, though it would continue for almost two more years.

Sometimes, it feels like it’s “not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon” for both northerners and southerners. We still seem to be fighting the Civil War in contemporary America. It may have ended in 1865, but the wounds are still fresh. Just recently, we’ve been debating how we should remember Confederate leaders and whether or not the war was preventable. And we continue to try to understand our past as a slaveholding society.

Having written a book on Robert E. Lee, I thought it might be helpful to recommend seven essential books on the Civil War. With well over 50,000 books written on the subject, a definitive list is impossible. These books, however, are outstanding starting points.

1. Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
This Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative will appeal to anyone interested in the Civil War. In a recent interview, McPherson said, “To understand the society in which they live, Americans need to understand how it got that way, and the Civil War determined a large part of how it got that way.” This book has been helping Americans better understand the Civil War for 30 years now.

McPherson is an outstanding historian who also happens to be a fine writer. In Battle Cry, there are insightful portraits of McClellan, Lincoln, Grant, and other important figures. Despite being almost 900 pages with lots of footnotes, it reads like a thriller. An early reviewer of the book in The New York Times wrote, “Mr. McPherson is wonderfully lucid. Again and again, hopelessly knotty subjects (for example, Lincoln’s relations with the radical Republicans) are painlessly made clear.”

2. Freedom National by James Oakes
President Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural address, stated that, “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.” James Oakes, in this excellent book, recognizes the central importance of slavery in the war, and focuses on the origins and implementation of the abolition of slavery in the United States.

In his provocative and compelling account of emancipation, Oakes argues that Republicans, from the very beginning, “insisted that slavery was the cause of the rebellion, and emancipation an appropriate and ultimately indispensable means of suppressing it.” Oakes also persuasively shows that destroying slavery turned out to be much more difficult than everyone expected. The great historian of American slavery, David Brion Davis, has written of this book, “Oakes brilliantly succeeds in distilling from a great mass of facts a series of clear themes and arguments that provide a new perspective on one of the central events in American history.”

3. This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
This creative and moving book is “about the work of death in the American Civil War.” Chapters are titled “Dying,” “Killing,” “Accounting,” etc., and each one offers an incredible amount of information on the specific area relating to death. Readers learn that the survivors of the war “lived the rest of their lives with grief and loss.”

The chapter on “Burying” is especially haunting. We’re told that after the Battle of Gettysburg, “an estimated six million pounds of human and animal carcasses lay strewn across the field in the summer heat, and a town of 2,400 grappled with 22,000 wounded who remained alive but in desperate condition.” One boy remembered, according to Faust, that everyone went around with peppermint oil to counteract the smell of the carnage. One of the enduring results of the Civil War is that the government had to take over responsibility for the burials of fallen soldiers. This gem of a book provides us with many different ways of viewing the war.

4. The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner
This Pulitzer Prize-winning book, by one of America’s finest historians, traces the evolution of Lincoln’s “ideas in the context of the broad antislavery impulse and the unprecedented crisis the United States confronted during his adult life.” It’s extremely well-written and based on a mastery of the source materials.

Foner focuses on Lincoln’s tremendous capacity for growth, writing “Lincoln’s career was a process of moral and political education and deepening antislavery conviction.” Of The Fiery Trial, David Brion Davis writes, “While many thousands of books deal with Lincoln and slavery, Eric Foner has written the definitive account of this crucial subject, illuminating in a highly original and profound way the interactions of race, slavery, public opinion, politics, and Lincoln’s own character that led to the wholly improbable uncompensated emancipation of some four million slaves.”

5. A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
No list of Civil War books would be complete without something by Bruce Catton — one of the finest writers of history for a general audience. This one, a narrative account of the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness to Appomattox, won a much-deserved Pulitzer Prize.

I’m in awe of Catton’s writing. Here he is on the opening hours of the Battle of the Wilderness:

The whole Wilderness seemed to be boiling and smoking, with dense clouds going up to blot out the sunlight. From the rear, Warren pushed the rest of his corps into the fight, and there is no coherent story to be told about any of it: it was all violent confusion, with occasional revealing glimpses to be had in the infernal clogged mist.

And here he is on Grant at the end of the second day in the Wilderness, “The army had rubbed elbows with sheer catastrophe that night and Grant knew it, and when he was alone he could be as much tormented by suspense as anyone else.” This book is good history and outstanding storytelling. I can’t recommend it enough.

6. Lincoln’s Code by John Fabian Witt
In December 1862, Francis Lieber was asked to draft a “code of regulations” drawn from the “laws and usages of war.” He eventually produced a code consisting of 157 articles covering a wide variety of rules and regulations relating to war. In May 1863, Lieber’s code, “General Orders №100,” was approved by President Lincoln. Witt argues that Lieber’s creation had a significant impact on the Civil War and still affects the law of war in the 21st century.

This is a fascinating and important book that allows the reader to analyze the main events of the war from a legal perspective. For example, Witt shows how Lieber’s work gave legal sanction to the Emancipation Proclamation, even though his code was primarily designed to establish limits on waging war. This outstanding work also provides the reader with a framework for understanding the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries.

7. Race and Reunion by David Blight
This book is about how Americans remembered the Civil war in the fifty years or so after 1865. Blight explores “the ways that contending memories clashed or intermingled in public memory…” During this time, we see the emergence of the Lost Cause tradition, which became extremely popular in both the North and South.

Race and Reunion is particularly relevant right now, as Americans reevaluate the ways in which they remember Confederate leaders. David Blight, who has a book coming out on Frederick Douglass in October 2018, is one of the leading public historians in America today.

In conclusion, I’ll suggest several books on Civil War military history:  Chancellorsville by Stephen Sears; The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864 by Gordon Rhea; and General Lee’s Army by Joseph Glatthaar.

5 Essential Books on George Washington

Washington crossing the Delaware

Washington crossing the Delaware

During the early days of the Revolutionary War, in August 1775, General George Washington sent a letter protesting the treatment of American officers to the British commander, General Thomas Gage. Washington objected to the British practice of throwing American officers into jails with common criminals.

Gage responded by saying he refused to recognize ranks among Americans “for I acknowledge no rank that is not derived from the king.” Angered by Gage’s barbarous policy, Washington controlled his temper and coolly replied, “You affect, Sir, to despise all rank not derived from the same source with your own. I cannot conceive any more honorable than that which flows from the uncorrupted choice of a brave and free people—the purest source and original fountain of all power…I shall now, Sir, close my correspondence with you, perhaps forever.”

This brief but remarkable exchange shows that George Washington, almost a year before the writing of the Declaration of Independence, believed that the people—and not a hereditary monarch—were the true source of authority. This was a radical idea at the time. And it was perhaps even more incredible that the idea was being defended by a conservative planter from Virginia. Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, described Washington as “our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place of his country’s love.”

Today, we remember many things about George Washington: His role as the “indispensable man” of the Revolutionary War; his wooden teeth; his indefensible ownership of slaves; and his part in dispossessing Native Americans of their land. As we reevaluate his historical legacy, we must not forget his courageous defense of American principles during a seemingly futile rebellion against the greatest empire of the age. Below are five outstanding books for learning more about George Washington.

1.       Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of George Washington. Gordon Wood, an esteemed historian of the American Revolution, called Chernow’s book, “The best, most comprehensive, and most balanced single-volume biography of Washington ever written.”

Chernow’s goal is to make Washington “real, credible, and charismatic in the same way he was perceived by his contemporaries.” His Washington is a heroic figure, though Chernow doesn’t avoid discussing his faults, noting the demands he put on his slaves and his flintiness when it came to personal finances. Despite Washington’s reputation for stoicism, he could be extremely emotional on occasion. During a demoralizing defeat on the battlefield in September 1775, Washington’s officers struggled to “get him off the field, so great was his emotions.” And when he wanted to include a list of grievances in his famous presidential Farewell Address, Alexander Hamilton wisely chose not to include them in the final draft.

It’s difficult to disagree with Chernow’s belief that Washington was indeed the indispensable man of the American Revolution. Chernow writes, “He brought maturity, sobriety, judgment, and integrity to a political experiment that could have easily grown giddy with its own vaunted success, and he avoided the backbiting, envy, and intrigue that detracted from the achievements of the other founders.”

George Washington

George Washington

2.       You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexis Coe

Alexis Coe begins her book by noting that there hasn’t been an adult biography of George Washington written by a woman in over forty years. She then pokes fun of some of Washington’s male biographers, who she nicknames the “Thigh Men” for their obsession with the Founding Father’s manliness. The historian Joseph Ellis, for example, admired how Washington’s thighs “allowed him to grip a horse’s flanks tightly and hold his seat in the saddle with uncommon ease.”

Coe’s perspective is helpful when considering George Washington’s mother, Mary Washington. The Thigh Men often present Mary as a shrew, though there is little evidence to support such a harsh view. Coe’s Mary Washington, on the other hand, is a hard-working widow, who managed the farm and raised arguably the greatest American of all time.

This book has lots of lists and sidebars and primary sources. I really enjoyed the inclusion of this content and believe it’s a smart way to reach a wider audience. Among the many interesting bits, Coe includes a recipe for hoecakes, Washington’s favorite breakfast. There’s also a sidebar with Washington’s waspish marginalia to sections of a pamphlet written by James Monroe that was critical of the Washington administration.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. One criticism, however, is that there is little here on Washington’s military career. Ironically, it’s as if she’s conceding that this is a topic for male historians. Personally, I believe—paraphrasing Georges Clemenceau— the subject of war is too serious a matter to be entrusted solely to the Thigh Men.

3.       The Indian World of George Washington by Colin Calloway

Calloway, who believes that “nothing was more central than the relationship between the first president and the first Americans,” has written one of the best and most important books about George Washington. Throughout Washington’s eventful life, he inhabited a world “on the land of dispossessed Indian people.” He had been linked to the frontier as a surveyor, speculator, soldier, and politician, and would accumulate 45,000 acres of western lands by the time of his death.

This is a fascinating book that I couldn’t put down. The Indians actually named Washington, Conotocarious, which means “Town Destroyer.” Several years after the Revolutionary War, Seneca chiefs told Washington, “When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you Town Destroyer; and to this day when the name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale and our children cling to the necks of their mothers.”

Calloway makes it clear that his goal isn’t to demonize Washington. Rather, he tries to show that his life was “inextricably linked to Native America, a reality we have forgotten as our historical hindsight has separated Indians and early Americans so sharply, and prematurely, into winners and losers.” Calloway concludes by examining Washington’s complex legacy. The founding father “saw his policies as setting Indians on the road to survival, not destruction, giving them the opportunity to remake themselves as American citizens.” Yet, Washington ultimately “failed to balance expansion onto Indian lands with justice to Indian people.”

4.       Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

George Washington owned and managed hundreds of slaves at Mount Vernon during his lifetime. This outstanding book by Erica Armstrong Dunbar examines the connection between Washington and the institution of slavery. The journalist Michele Norris feels Never Caught “ought to be on Americans’ reading list about our real history.” I strongly agree.

Ona Judge, one of Martha Washington’s favored slaves, ran away from Philadelphia in 1796, and ended up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Judge decided to flee after hearing that Martha intended on giving Ona to her granddaughter as a wedding present. Upon learning of the escape, George Washington wrote, “The ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up & treated more like a child than a Servant (& Mrs. Washington’s desire to recover her) ought not to escape with impunity if it can be avoided.”

George Washington may have expressed ambivalence about slavery later in his life, but he remained financially dependent on the institution throughout his career as a soldier and statesman. This book shows that Washington was a demanding slaveowner, who took extraordinary steps to protect his human “property.” When an official suggested that Ona Judge might return if she was promised her freedom, Washington wrote, “for however well disposed I might be to gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference.” Washington waited until his death to free 123 of his own slaves, though their emancipation would be delayed until after Martha died. And Martha’s 150 separately owned “dower” slaves would not be freed upon her death. George Washington’s legacy was forever tarnished by his lifelong involvement with slavery. He recognized that the ownership of his fellow human beings was wrong, but he lacked the moral courage to do anything meaningful about it.  

An interview with Ona Judge

An interview with Ona Judge

5. His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis

The prolific historian of the Founding Fathers, Joseph Ellis, has a much less negative view of George Washington’s relationship to slavery. According to Ellis, George Washington, in his final years, wrestled with the dilemma of “what should be done with those three hundred black residents of Mount Vernon, whom he could not in good conscience sell without breaking up families, could not afford to keep without enlarging his annual costs, and whose very presence constituted a massive contradiction of the principles on which his heroic reputation rested.” Washington’s ultimate decision to free his slaves after his death, Ellis believes, represented “a clear statement of his personal rejection of slavery.”

Joseph Ellis is a fine writer and an outstanding scholar. Before writing his biography of George Washington, he read The Papers of George Washington in their entirety. Somehow, he was able to synthesize his many insights from all that material into an engaging one-volume account—a “modest-sized book about a massive historical subject,” as he calls it. He clearly succeeds in his goal. His Excellency is an extraordinary achievement.

Ellis’ historical insights are sharper than Chernow’s. He writes of Washington, “Ultimately, his life was all about power: facing it, taming it, channeling it, projecting it. His remarkably reliable judgment derived from his elemental understanding of how power worked in the world.” For Ellis, this explains why George Washington is the greatest of the Founding Fathers, deserving of his place “atop the American version of Mount Olympus.”