BY TRACING George Washington's deliberate development from
colonial planter and soldier to republican icon, Paul Longmore
answers the riddle of Washington's simultaneous fame and aloofness,
arriving at a portrait of Washington as a self-fashioning
representative of his turbulent time. As a young Virginia planter,
Washington aspired to virtues associated with the colonial gentry,
but as the British system of patronage threatened his own
ambitions, he adopted the radical Whig patriotism that would lead
him to take up arms. As a national hero of the Revolutionary War,
and in accepting the presidency, Washington defended civilian
control of the military and other ideals of republican government
because his own image was inextricably tied to their success. The
Invention of George Washington, first published in hardcover in
1988, explores the character of our first president in modern
terms, but as Longmore shows, Washington's assiduous cultivation of
his own public image does not ultimately diminish his extraordinary
achievements as general and statesman.
General
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