Customer Reviews

Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation

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Richard Norton Smith's book about Washington's importance to the new nation is an excellent example of the way history should be written. It provides insight into the importance of George Washington to the young United States, and it demonstrates the impact that one person of character can have on history.

While its treatment of Hamilton is at times too harsh, this book is an important revision to the idea that Washington was anyone's puppet.

Smith has written a good book that rightly focuses on Washington's building of our national government through careful consideration of precedent and the ability to balance factions through the force of his dignity and integrity.

Our new American government need not have stuck by its Constitutional structure. Indeed, that document was a plan on paper that could arguably have been observed more in the breech had Washington had anything like Napolean's thirst for personal power.

Yet that marvelous document was strengthened by Washington's desire to observe its structure and strictures. Smith details how our first president was keenly aware that his organization of the government and almost every action were setting the precedents that would determine whether his successors would be preside in his spirit or in a vein more threatening to the liberties he had helped purchase during the Revolution.

He also had the help of very intelligent men in his cabinet -- principally Hamilton and Jefferson -- who had opposing views as to the nature of the federal government and its goals and desired relationship to the individual, states and the economy. That Washington was able to keep them both in his employ during the critical period of his first term reveals him to be a very good politician who was adept at balancing interests, using his prestige, and satisfying the egos of men who thought they were destined to design the nation in this first presidency.

I would have liked a little more detail on the actual organization of the government and it's establishment. Smith focuses more on the personal and relationships of Washington and his key subordinates -- somewhat of a style over substance analysis of his two terms. Yet at this period, style and nuance were critical to setting a positive tone for the presidency and Smith's focus is certainly a good lense through which to shed more light on this important historical era.

I bought Richard N. Smith's "Patriarch" at an airport gift shop because I was looking at two long boring flights and there wasn't any book that looked better. The situation was grim because I am no learned scholar or erudite student with 200 other books about Washington on the shelves.
But once I started "Patriarch" I simply could barely put it down. Somehow, Richard Smith was coaxing that cheerless Washington out of that stodgy old painting we've all seen and bringing GW to life. The "Founding Father" was - surprise - a real life person and, truth is, as a person and a statesman, he was positively jam up!
Before "Patriarch", it never occured to me what a real-time, online chore he had launchinig this country during his first Presidency. He, and mostly he alone, was the cool forge water that quenched Hamilton's fire and tempered Jefferson's steel to save the new country from a virtual "crib death". Washington's shepherding of the Constitution from damp and dangerous footing to solid ground was a feat nothing short of Incredible. And as the pages of "Patriarch" flew by for this jaded 60s-era non-Historian Washington's stature rose again like a Phoenix, and for the first time I understood why that glum old guy in that drab old picture was, and is, so venerated even 200 years after his death.
This book, "Patriarch", is George Washinton - The Man - at his Best, and thanks to Richard Norton Smith, you will actually enjoy meeting him this time around.

Smith's book does a great service to those of us interested in a remarkable figure who is often overlooked in today's historical studies. This is a study of Washington's role as our first chief executive in our fledgling republic. From the beginning we learn of the rock solid character Washington possessed and how it shaped his life in everthing he did.

Washington always accepted the call to service, not for fortune and fame, but because he felt it was his duty. A trait that astonished such world leaders like King George III and Napoleon. After we learn more about Washington in this wonderfully detailed account of Washington and his presidency, we or at least I come away feeling sympathetic to Washington and his desire for a peaceful retirement. But alas, it wasn't meant to be for the father of our country.

Washington's disdain for political factions and his ability to be apolitical is amazing considering his diverse cabinet which included two very ideological polar opposites in Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps only Washington could have kept these two talented men in his cabinet for any reasonable length of time.

But Washington was always the Federalist who believed in a strong central government that could hold the Union together. And this was necessary for a republic in its infant stage. This view on government's role was not that popular in his own native Virginia and other states south. Jefferson, on trying to persuade Washington to accept a second term, aptly put it when he said North and South would hang together so long as they had Washington to hang on to. An ominous portent of sectional conflicts to come.

Washington enjoyed successes and failures during his presidency. He was perhaps the only man in his administration that lived by his neutrality doctrine, especially when men like Jefferson were inclined to support the French and men like Hamilton were greater supporters of England. But even Washington was not immune to criticism, which we clearly see in this book.

He was, after all, a human being. He was a proud man who was always conscious of his actions and wanted to make sure he lived by the virtues he espoused. In the end, we can appreciate the rock solid character of George Washington and how by his very presence, he seemed to hold our country together.

Because this book focuses exclusively on Washington's presidency, it avoids the trappings of postmodernist social history and instead gives us a portrait of power. More than a mere dupe of Hamilton, Washington is presented instead as a symbol of dignity; firm, intelligent, and focused. While the author makes it clear that Washington was far from the man of marble so often portrayed in grade school history books, he was nonetheless a man of true principle -- especially in terms of Federalist philosophy. Modern readers should take note of Washington's belief in a strong central government and a distrust of states' rights and factions. Also, the author rightly places his Farewell Address in the pantheon of great American documents -- a collection of remarkably prescient prose arguably as influential as anything ever written by Jefferson or Lincoln.

This book is a bit dry (hence 4 stars), but I did not have any trouble staying with the story. After an introduction, the book is solely about Washington during his eight-year Presidency and his almost three years afterward (to his death).

In addition to politics, we get pieces that tell us how Washington felt about First People, slavery, and the building of what would become Washington D.C. The narrative is sometimes interrupted by small stories; for example, who dined with Washington one evening and who argued with whom. I learned to regard these breaks as information about who was in his larger circle and what was considered fair dinner conversation in his company.

I feel that the author drives to two conclusions. One is in the first half of chapter 13, "An Honorable Discharge." Here the author explains the significance of Washington's Farewell Address in terms of the man, the country he fought to create, and the Constitution he helped create and to which he yielded as President. This is worth all the reading that came before. The second conclusion is the Epilogue in which the author tries to redress the common myth of Washington as the cold icon on the dollar bill.

By the end, the author convinced me of Washington's greatness as the man who led the new republic into fairly using its new Constitution. (I think we should be thankful he considered farming Mount Vernon more rewarding than political leadership.) Washington was the rarest of military heroes -- he chose to be a visionary guardian of the new country instead of riding his reputation into a dictatorship. Young America was very fortunate.

Very good book. I'm a George Washington fan and a fan of the Revolutionary War. This is a look at GW presidency and the great job he did as President.
Richard Norton Smith is also a favorite of mine and has written a informative and easy to read book that I found hard to put down.

This book concentrates on Washington's administration. It gave me a new appreciation for how instrumental he was in building the nation--not just freeing a collection of thirteen states from Britain.

Except for what I felt was the author's ponderous style, this is a great book.

Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation is a book about George Washington that follows a unique formula. For this book is about President George Washington as opposed to General George Washington. The purpose is to give readers and understanding in early constitutional government and George Washington's role in it.

Americans today take for our constitutional government for granted. We hold elections every two years for Congress and every four years for the presidency, and to us this is normal procedure and part of the natural order of things. However, this democratic republican nature was not always guaranteed to be our fate. The fact that since the current form of our Republic was established in 1789, we have enjoyed over two centuries of peaceful transition from administration to the other*. As grown older it has also grown much stronger, with each year it existed it established more legitimacy and historical memory of the American people, and as it continued it became more inclusive going from a republic with only white men who owned land voting to suffrage being extended to all citizens upon entering adulthood.

In the beginning of this new form of government, the Constitution, everything was new and those who were in it were learning how to make this bi-cameral Congress, presidency and Supreme Court work. There were many ups and downs, experiments that would ultimately become precedent, and experiments that would fall apart almost immediately.

"On August 22, 1789, taking literally his constitutional charge to advise and consent with lawmakers over a proposed treaty involving southern Indian tribes, Washington had appeared in Federal Hall. Senator Maclay moved to refer the whole business to an appropriate committee of Congress. For a moment, Washington lost his legendary poise. `This defeats every purpose of my coming here,' he exploded. Soon after he withdrew vowing he would be damned rather than face such public humiliation again. In a single exchange Maclay and his colleagues had asserted their independence, undone the executive's plan to treat them as a kind of privy council, and laid the groundwork for a very different set of presidential advisers, the Cabinet." p.37

The book covers not only the major events of the Washington presidency, such as Hamilton's economic plans, the Bill of Rights, Citizen Genet, and the Jay treaty, but it also discuss a great deal of what life was like in our first two capitals of New York and Philadelphia. How Washington dealt with people's expectations of him is one of the books reoccurring themes. One of Smith's great accomplishments in this book is the way he shows President Washington as a smooth political operator.

"Politics is theater, and George Washington was America's first actor-president. The Constitution made Washington head of state as well as head of government, and no man had a better grasp of ceremonial leadership then George III's American usurper. The Washington presidency was nothing if not theatrical. Why else the elaborate rituals of levee and drawing room, of triumphal progress to occasions of state and deferential responses from lawmakers for whom the president was both symbol of continuity and the instrument of change? As the embodiment of revolutionary virtue, Washington knew that wherever he appeared, partisan murmurs would be lost in a chorus of hero worship. This alone was enough to make him the young republic's greatest asset and only glue." p. 87

Smith's work covers Washington's presidency and his post presidency in such detail that those who choose to read this book are opening a window into one of the most interesting decades in our history: the 1790s. I trust those who give this book time will not be disappointed.

* There is the 1860 exception of course, but I view the U.S. Civil War as something that the Republic was able to get though in one piece (we did have elections in 1862 and 1864 after all) by holding the nation together in `one piece'.

This book covers a special period of Washington's life, the presidential years. Very interesting and well written. Because it covers a relatively short period, it is able to show a personal side of Washington, missing in biographies, based on Washington's many letters written to friends and relatives. But it also covers the politics and nation building too. This is a book you don't want to miss.