The author of seven highly acclaimed books, Joseph J. Ellis has
crafted a landmark biography that brings to life in all his
complexity the most important and perhaps least understood figure
in American history, George Washington. With his careful attention
to detail and his lyrical prose, Ellis has set a new standard for
biography.
Drawing from the newly" catalogued Washington papers at the
University of Virginia, Joseph Ellis paints a full portrait of
George Washington's life and career-from his military years through
his two terms as president. Ellis illuminates the difficulties the
first executive confronted as he worked to keep the emerging
country united in the face of adversarial factions. He richly
details Washington's private life and illustrates the ways in which
it influenced his public persona. Through Ellis's artful narration,
we look inside Washington's" marriage and his subsequent entrance
into the upper echelons of Virginia's plantation society. We come
to understand that it was by managing his own" large debts to
British merchants that he experienced firsthand the imperiousness
of the British Empire. And we watch the evolution of his attitude
toward slavery, which led to his emancipating his own slaves in his
will. Throughout, Ellis peels back the layers of myth and uncovers
for us Washington in the context of eighteenth-century America,
allowing us to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments and
the character of his spirit and mind."
When Washington died in 1799, Ellis tells us," he was eulogized as
"first in the hearts of his countrymen." Since then, however, his
image has been chisled onto Mount Rushmore and printed on the
dollar bill. He is on ourlandscape and in our wallets but not,
Ellis argues, in our hearts. Ellis strips away the ivy and legend
that have grown up over the Washington statue and recovers the
flesh-and-blood man in all his passionate and fully human prowess.
In the pantheon of our republic's founders, there were many
outstanding individuals. And yet each of them-Franklin, Hamilton,
Adams, Jefferson, and Madison- acknowledged Washington to be his
superior, the only indispensable figure, the one and only "His
Excellency." Both physically and politically, Washington towered
over his peers for reasons this book elucidates. "His Excellency is
a full, glorious, and multifaceted portrait of the man behind our
country's genesis, sure to become the authoritative biography of
George Washington for many decades.
"From the Hardcover edition.
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