Washington's End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle - Hardcover

Horn, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1501154230 ISBN 13: 9781501154232

Verlag: Scribner, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Popular historian and former White House speechwriter Jonathan Horn tells the astonishing true story of George Washington’s forgotten last years—the personalities, plotting, and private torment that unraveled America’s first post-presidency.

Washington’s End begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered by partisan criticism and eager to return to his farm, Washington assumed a role for which there was no precedent at a time when the kings across the ocean yielded their crowns only upon losing their heads. In a different sense, Washington would lose his head, too.

In this riveting read, bestselling author Jonathan Horn reveals that the quest to surrender power proved more difficult than Washington imagined and brought his life to an end he never expected. The statesman who had staked his legacy on withdrawing from public life would feud with his successors and find himself drawn back into military command. The patriarch who had dedicated his life to uniting his country would leave his name to a new capital city destined to become synonymous with political divisions.

A vivid story, immaculately researched and powerfully told through the eyes not only of Washington but also of his family members, friends, and foes, Washington’s End fills a crucial gap in our nation’s history and will forever change the way we view the name Washington.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jonathan Horn is an author and former White House presidential speechwriter whose books include Washington’s End and the Robert E. Lee biography The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller. He has written for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Disunion series, New York Post, The Daily Beast, National Review, and POLITICO, and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour. A graduate of Yale, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, two children, and dog. His latest book is The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. 

 

 

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Prologue PROLOGUE History’s Current
Peering through the doorway into the chamber minutes before noon on March 4, 1797, John Adams hears whispers and sees the backside of the hero receding down the aisle: his long hair powdered and pulled back into a queue that is tied and tucked into a bag below the nape of the neck, in a style common among the now old men who wrote the first chapter of their country’s history. The back of the head would look much like Adams’s own if not standing a half foot taller. The whispers in the chamber rise to a roar as the great man nears the halfway point between the door to the east and the dais to the west. “Washington! Washington!” the people packing the gallery on the north side cry. Soon they will see what no one alive ever has: the title of head of state peacefully passing from one breathing man to another. The thought leaves Adams light-headed.

Outside the chamber, the wind blows from the southwest, the direction George Washington will soon ride to his Virginia home, as if nature itself resists his leaving Philadelphia, the country’s interim capital. Adams waits under the cover of the portico connecting the lower chamber of Congress Hall to the old state house now shorn of the rotting steeple that watched over the Continental Congress in 1775, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when he nominated Washington for commander in chief of the Continental Army. The old stories of Washington’s courage during the French and Indian War had impressed everyone. How “handsome” he looked in the uniform he wore to the Congress! Even then, Adams envied Washington. “[His] excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union,” Adams remembers having told the delegates, while worrying that the people might turn the general into an idol.

In a sense, the people have. They bestow Washington’s name on their children and towns, hang his portrait in their homes, and celebrate his birthday with balls, like the “splendid but tedious” one Adams attended ten days ago when Washington turned sixty-five. The Philadelphia socialites have hinted at the advice they would give: rent the house Washington will vacate; dress and act as he would. Disappointment, Adams knows, awaits. The people must adjust to a new kind of president, one who cannot afford to entertain in the same style. No more formal dinner parties with carefully curated guest lists; the company of “a few select friends” must do. No more driving through Philadelphia’s streets behind six horses; two must suffice. No more congressmen pausing to pay tribute on the president’s birthday, if for no other reason than the calendar: Adams’s upcoming sixty-second will occur during a recess (he has already checked).

Adams has not slept in more than a day. The stress has built ever since he heard Washington promise to attend the inauguration. Adams misses Abigail, the wife he left back home in Massachusetts, though even she doubts whether he can “fill” Washington’s “place.” It is not because of a superior education, for Adams knows Washington’s schooling ceased around his fifteenth birthday, before he ever attended a college like Adams’s alma mater, Harvard. Nor does Adams think it is because of Washington’s superior character, for “there are thousands of others who have in them all the essential qualities—moral & intellectual—which compose it.” Washington’s willingness to surrender power merely conforms to a culture obsessed with Cincinnatus, the ancient Roman general who saved the republic only to surrender power and return to his farm. Had Washington lived in another culture or at another time, he might have instead copied Caesar. Where the people applauding in the chamber see selflessness, Adams sees ambition for the same fame he detests himself for coveting.

What, then, accounts for Washington’s “immense elevation above his fellows”? The answers, Adams believes, are so obvious as to be overlooked: for example, Washington’s standing six feet tall and looking even taller thanks to the king-sized hands and feet crowning those long, “elegant” limbs. There has never been a choice but to look up to Washington. Hailing from Virginia, the oldest colony and largest state, has magnified his advantage because “Virginian geese are all swans,” or so they tell themselves in the Old Dominion. Wedding the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis thirty-eight years ago has given Washington control over an immense fortune and an unsurpassed reputation for “disinterestedness,” all because he could afford to serve without salary during the war. Having no biological children—the two Custis grandchildren who have lived with him during the presidency are the fruit of Mrs. Washington’s first marriage—has reassured a people paranoid about hereditary succession and has mostly spared Washington from irritating rumors like the one dogging Adams about positioning his oldest son, John Quincy, as heir apparent. Possessing unusual “self-command” allows Washington to conceal his fierce temper, even though he often loses control of it behind closed doors. In public, he has “the gift of silence,” a rare talent for pursing his lips and clenching his jaw so as to hide those ugly blackish-looking false teeth and let people imagine instead the wondrous depths of “rivers whose bottoms we cannot see.”

Washington knows how to leave people wanting more. For their eyes, he has always staged his entrances and exits with “a strain of Shakespearean… excellence”: the moment in 1775 when he “darted” out of the room rather than (“modesty” forbid!) hear his name nominated for commander of the Continental Army; the “solemn” scene eight years later when he resigned his commission after securing America’s independence; the reluctance he manifested before emerging from retirement to chair the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and to accept the newly created office of president in 1789; the prophetic-sounding farewell address he published this past September, weeks before the election so as to deter the electors from giving him the third term he would otherwise have received.

An encore now ensues. As the cheers in the chamber grow louder, Washington walks faster so as to signal how desperate he is to break free of the trappings of power that have detained him for two terms from Mount Vernon, his beloved Virginia estate overlooking the Potomac River. This time, Adams believes, it is more than an act. Washington staying in office a single day more would endanger his health. “He must plunge into agriculture and ride away his reflections,” the memories of the controversies and calumnies that he fears have tarnished his reputation.

The country has divided into the parties Washington hoped never to see...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Scribner
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1501154230
• ISBN 13: 9781501154232
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande