the powers of all future American presidents.
Victorious, they set the world on fire. The scrappy Americans stunned Great Britain—the mightiest empire on earth—and sparked a powder keg of political unrest across the Old World and the New. These patriots’ revolutionary republican ideology and military triumph helped ignite uprisings in France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Haiti, and Latin America.1 At home, the Americans needed to harness that revolutionary fire to forge a nation, lest it rage out of control and consume their grand experiment. For while their victory in the Revolutionary War was glorious, the aftermath was less so. Facing bankruptcy and internal strife, the United States turned once again to its father and protector: the warrior-turned-farmer, George Washington.
As commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution, Washington triumphantly led a confederation of thirteen allied state governments. But following their victory, the American states were only loosely united under the governing document known as the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” Ironically, these Articles created a decentralized union that proved to be far from perpetual.
The United States were less a cohesive nation than thirteen independent, sovereign states loosely tethered by a weak central government—the Confederation Congress.2 Americans of the era often referred to their nation in the plural form. They did not yet conceive of themselves as one indissoluble nation composed of thirteen parts, but rather as a voluntary confederation of independent allied states where many citizens felt greater allegiance to their own region than to any new national government.3
Washington had seen this firsthand back during the war. His Continental Army—sick, hungry, shivering—huddled within their makeshift winter encampment at Valley Forge, where bone-chilling winds proved far more deadly than the British could ever hope to be. With ice and bodies piling up around him, Washington feared mutiny among his troops and sought reassurance. He did not obtain it. In one of the Revolution’s darkest hours, he ordered a few soldiers to swear allegiance to the United States. They shockingly refused, instead declaring, “New Jersey is our country!”4
Such political disunity stemmed from deeply rooted fear. Americans were wary of replicating the British system where their liberties were suppressed by a distant government that was deaf to their wishes. To avoid the reemergence of such a regime after their fight for independence erupted, the states clung fiercely to local rule. The individual states retained most of the power over their own citizenry rather than relinquish it to the new national Congress. Even though it had authority over diplomacy and military decisions, Congress was at the mercy of the states since they supplied most of the soldiers and resources to the Continental Army.5
Under this arrangement, rather than a single American army, Washington had led what was akin to a coalition force, supplied with food, munitions, and soldiers by separate little nation-states.6 And despite having a common foe, the states bickered among themselves about the costs. As a result, they dangerously undersupplied Washington’s army, and the weak Congress could do little but entreat them to provide more troops. Like unruly children supervised by a feeble grandmother, the states quarreled while the Congress implored them to behave.
Washington saw this as a deeply flawed system. He described the national Congress as a “half-starved government [that] limped along on crutches, tottering at every step.”7 The fragile nation did have its glue, however. The thirteen states’ coalition was held together during the war in large part by the states’ belief in the leadership of one man: Washington. As commander in chief, he had become “the most effective bond, as well as conspicuous symbol, of union.”8
But the war ended and the Americans’ conspicuous symbol retired. Mere weeks after the last British troops evacuated New York City following the peace treaty, Washington resigned his commission as commander in chief in order to “retire from the Great Theater of Action” and “take leave of all the employments of public life.”9 He returned to Mount Vernon, his sprawling plantation on the Potomac, where he enjoyed the life of a gentleman farmer.
When not spending time with his family, entertaining dinner guests, or partaking in his favorite leisure activity of foxhunting, Washington oversaw a diversified business that included farming tobacco and wheat, breeding mules, milling flour, and weaving cloth. He commanded hundreds of slaves, who worked from sunrise to sunset on the many tasks of his bustling estate. While he increasingly recognized the contradiction between his fight for liberty and his ownership of slaves, writing, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery, he declined to free them.10 Eventually he would arrange for their emancipation in his will, but during his lifetime he remained far too dependent on them to tend his home, fields, and other enterprises.11 And after years of neglect during the war, he found his estate especially in need of their hard work.
Washington’s was a busy but tranquil occupation: instead of leading armies across the Delaware River to defend American liberty, he led investors in building canals so that he could better transport produce.12 Retiring to bed by nine o’clock almost every evening, he rested well, knowing that he had liberated his country after so many years of war.
While he was far removed from the public spotlight, he was certainly not forgotten. In fact, his self-imposed exile from politics stunned the world. After the war, his popularity was at such a height and his hold on the military so ironclad that some expected him to pronounce himself king of the United States. Washington’s voluntary surrender of power only further elevated his demigod status among the people. The annals of civilization were littered with triumphant generals who had helped their people throw off one tyrant only to take his place. But Washington broke from that cycle. He freed his people and then returned to his farm to leave the path open for republican self-government.
For both his inspirational leadership during the Revolution and his selfless retirement afterward, Washington was almost universally revered throughout America and beyond. A mere rumor of Washington passing through a town was enough to elicit a spontaneous parade. Even his critics were pressured into silence, since any attack against the great man was considered unpatriotic.13
One of the few men of the era to dislike Washington was his portraitist. Gilbert Stuart was a personable Rhode Islander whose lifelike portraits catapulted him to artistic stardom. He was a powerfully built, happy-go-lucky gentleman with an “attachment to the pleasures of the table and convivial society,” which a friend attributed to his time living in Ireland.14 Possessing “wit at will,” the painter relied on his knack for conversation to keep his subjects animated and to draw forth “the inmost soul upon the surface of the countenance.”15 But when he landed the appointment as Washington’s portraitist, his charm failed him.
Washington despised sitting for portraits almost as much as he disliked strangers’ attempts at familiarity. In no mood for idle conversation about military tactics with some bohemian artist, he rebuffed Stuart’s efforts at small talk. He was a master at masking his emotions and was not about to bare his soul. At one point during the sitting, Stuart tried to loosen up his subject by pleading, “Now, sir, you must let me forget that you are General Washington and that I am Stuart the painter.” Ever advocative of proper decorum, Washington replied, “Mr. Stuart need never feel the need of forgetting who he is, or who General Washington is.”16
Despite this resistance, Stuart perceived that beneath Washington’s stern, composed exterior was a man of fiery temperament. He perceived “features in [Washington’s] face totally different from what he ever observed in that of any other human being; the sockets of eyes, for instance, are larger than what he ever met with before, and the upper part of the nose broader.” His unusual features were “indicative of the strongest