George Washington Reconsidered.

Edited by Don Higginbotham. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Pp. [xii], 336. Paper, $18.50, ISBN 0-8139-2006-X; cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8139-2005-1.)

It is arguable that serious analysis of George Washington as a person and a leader--reconsideration, if you will--rehabilitation, for that matter--began with articles by Edmund S. Morgan in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1976 ("George Washington: The Aloof American," which is reprinted in the book under review) and by Richard H. Kohn in the West Point Alumni Magazine in 1978. Indeed, Morgan's The Genius of George Washington (New York, 1980) remains one of the best pieces ever written on the man. The edited volume under review here, George Washington Reconsidered, is consciously modeled after the only other compilation of essays on Washington, James Morton Smith's George Washington, A Profile (New York, 1969). It differs primarily insofar as it is limited to twenty-five years of historiography as opposed to a hundred and fifty, and it chooses not to focus on its subject's public career.

The editor, Don Higginbotham, has a much greater role in the volume than is usually the case with editors. He has spent years thinking about Washington, first as a military historian and, during the last decade, as a frequent participant in Mount Vernon's annual conferences on Washington, his home, and the world in which he lived. This is reflected in George Washington Reconsidered, each of whose thirteen essays is prefaced by editorial comments from Higginbotham. Included are two of his several essays on Washington. One examines Washington within the colonial military tradition. The other, on the interplay between Washington's localism and nationalism, is more provocative, arguing that it is "highly debatable whether Washington fits any of the definitions of a charismatic leader" (p. 142) and that he was deeply reluctant to accept the presidency in 1789. Higginbotham's introduction and afterword also serve as original and concise summaries of Washington historiography. Particularly useful are his comments on the very important but often overlooked Karal Ann Marling's George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). She and Paul K. Longmore, whose sequel-begging The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley, 1988) is the most insightful appraisal of Washington's life prior to Lexington and Concord, are obvious omissions in this compilation of those who have "reconsidered" Washington. The volume also suffers from its lack of a bibliography of Washington scholarship during the last quarter of the twentieth century.

In addition to the essays by Higginbotham and Morgan, the volume includes pieces by Joseph J. Ellis on the Farewell Address; Martin H. Quitt on the ancestral Washingtons; Bruce A. Ragsdale on the pre-Revolutionary Virginia economy; Glenn A. Phelps on the republican nature of Washington as commander-in-chief; Robert F. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell on Mount Vernon; two pieces by W. W. Abbot, one on Washington and the American West and the other on his papers; Peter R. Henriques on Washington's ideas about death and the afterlife; and Gordon S. Wood on Washington's "greatness." Students of Washington will be familiar with most if not all of these pieces because of their previous publication in the same or similar form. Dorothy Twohig's essay on Washington's role in the controversy over slavery, essentially the only original piece in the volume, is the best concise treatment available. As a master, he is described as erratic in his behavior toward his slaves--at one moment stem, at another indulgent. While admitting that Washington participated publicly in the "great silence" of the founders (he said he did "not like even to think much less talk of it" [p. 128]), Twohig stresses that, unlike Thomas Jefferson, this was not unusual for Washington, who rarely publicly expressed his views on controversial issues.

KENNETH R. BOWLING
The First Federal Congress Project
George Washington University