 Welcome to Conversations with Creative Minds. We have been searching for the meaning of creativity and the role it plays in our daily life. People use creativity to express themselves in different ways, such as writing, painting, poetry, composing music, or innovating new products. Creative minds have never been more relevant than today because of the need to solve our society's dynamic and complex problems. Today, our guest is award-winning at New York Times best-selling author William Martin. He has a rich career spanning decades, including working in the construction industry, Hollywood, and of course, writing some of America's best historical novels. He's been called the king of the historical novel. He's authored 12 novels, Back Bay, Neurovendings, The Rising of the Moon, Cape Cod, Annapolis, Citizen Washington, Harvard Yard, The Lost Constitution, City of Dreams, The Lincoln Letter, Bound for Gold, and of course, his latest book, December 41. It's a thriller. We're here today with William Martin, historical fiction author, and we're going to discuss one of his books, Citizen Washington, about the life of George Washington. Bill, how about giving us an overview of the arc of George Washington's life? Well, they called him first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. That was what Parson Weems said about him. And when I wrote George Washington, The Man Who Wouldn't Be King, which was an episode of the American experience on PBS some years ago, I called him first in war, first in peace, the first American to be set in stone. And that is the case with George Washington. However, the arc of his life is far more interesting than that. He isn't, as John Adams once described him, born wearing a powdered wig and a saber, makes a stately bow to his mother and goes off and joins Ben Franklin to win the revolution. And that's a paraphrase of something that John Adams actually said. George Washington was born as the third son of a middling tobacco planter in the Tidewater area of Virginia. He was not the son who was going to inherit anything if there was anything to inherit. And so he began as a young man on the main. As I said in the PBS special, a grasping land hungry young surveyor who would somehow make himself into a general who could win a revolution and then do what no general has had ever done before or has done since, which is that when he got his hands on power, he gave that power up, surrendered it to civilian authorities in order to create, as the Constitution says, a more perfect union. What is the process that leads a man to rise out of relatively humble beginnings to achieve that kind of stature? A stature that is born of acting honorably, acting in a way that we don't often see in politicians these days. And it gets back to, I think, an 18th century concept of reputation. George Washington, like most of the people of the 18th century, believed in the importance of reputation. And just to get started, I want to read you a little passage out of Citizen Washington, which is a novel that is told through 12 different narrators, some of them fictional, some of them historical, who tell their own life stories while telling the story of their encounters and their lifelong relationships with George Washington. Now, this is a character who knew Washington for a long time and didn't particularly like him, but will come to respect him by the time the story is over. It was a small world we moved in, don't forget, and what people thought about you mattered. You might think I don't give two dams for what men think about me, but your reputation means everything. It means more than saying you're good in a fight or rich or smart. It means you have the respect of the men around you. It means you know who you are, and so does everybody else. It means your credit's good. Hell, it means you can say the cows will come home at dawn instead of its sunset, and nobody's going to get up early to prove you wrong. That's kind of a distillation, a colloquial distillation of what reputation meant to all of these people. George Washington throughout the course of the revolution, and we're probably getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. We're not talking about the middle of his life here, but throughout the course of the revolution and throughout his presidency would always understand that he was by then acting for history and for the establishment of precedents that would form, if not actual rules, then guidelines for how future presidents could and should act. And so it's just very interesting to me and always has been as a writer to trace that arc almost from those humble beginnings. He wasn't born in a log cabin the way that Lincoln was, but close to it. And he became, as the King of England would say, King George III after Washington surrendered the army and went home. King George III heard about this and says if Washington can do this, he'll be the greatest man in the world. So kind of his character was developed by his reputation or his reputation and character were intertwined throughout his life. Well, they were, most of the boys who were being educated, and it was mostly young males who were educated, young women would basically taught to read and to knit their world, not ours. Most of the males who went to school and Washington did for a time would be given a book called the rules of civility and decent conversation in, no, the rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation. This was a hundred, a book of a hundred rules that had been first written by a group of French Jesuits and it had been translated and everybody had picked up on it as a good way to teach a young man how to begin to build and mold his reputation. This reputation would come from the fact that whether he acted honorably or not, it would come from the way that he conducted himself in business and in his job and in all those other things. And so from the very beginning, Washington was steeped in this idea of reputation. The rules, some of them pretty interesting. Rule number one, of course, is that some small gesture of respect should be made when you enter a room and meet people. That's very good. Rule number two is much more specific and has much more to do with manners. Clean not thy teeth with the tablecloth or fork when seated at the table. If it must be done, use a pick tooth or a toothpick. So that's how the rules bounce back and forth like that. I like rule number six, of course, and I always use it when I'm talking about Washington in front of an audience. Sleep not when others speak. But the most important of those rules is rule number 100, the last rule in the book. Let favor to keep alive and I breast some small spark of that celestial fire called conscience. And I believe that Washington took that rule to heart. We know that he took the whole book to heart. There is actually at Mount Vernon a notebook that shows each of these rules written out in George Washington's boyish hand sometime in the 1730s, the 1730s or 1740s. And so we know that he carried that vision of what conscience was all about with him throughout his whole life. Didn't always inform his actions, but generally it did. You know, his father died, his brother married well and moved up to that place that he named after a general that he had served with. This is the brother Lawrence Washington. And the general was General Vernon. And so he got this promontory of land on the Potomac and called it Mount Vernon. His brother George would later inherit Mount Vernon. But young George recognized that the way to begin to establish your reputation as a man of business and property was to get your hands on some property. And so he began studying surveying because the best surveyors got the first look at the best lands. And he began buying up small pieces of property here and there. And by the end of his life, he would be as the old saying goes land rich and cash poor, but he sure would own a lot of land. And that was how he got started in the world of business was as a young surveyor. We forget, however, that the next step in becoming a man of property and reputation was to get a commission to serve in the military. And so he wanted to serve as a British officer and angled for that position for a long time. After his father died when he was still young, one of his mother's brothers, or no, one of his patrons in Virginia got him a commission in the British Navy. George Washington was ready to set off and become a midshipman in the British Navy. And his uncle, the brother of his mother said, don't let him do this. He is the orphaned son, or the fatherless son of an American or of a colonial who had no estate, has no connections, has no power in the British power structure. If you put him aboard a ship like that with the hopes that he will rise to become a captain or something higher than that, it will never happen. They will, as this is a direct quote, they will fold him and staple him like a Negro or a dog. That's what the uncle wrote to the mother. And the mother at that point said, George, you're not going, you're not going to be in the British Navy. And this is very early when his life was about 14 years old. And that was what led him to decide, okay, if I can't do this, I'll become a surveyor. He learned the business of surveying, got out on the frontier, learned how to live in the roughest and toughest of environments because surveyors were out there sleeping on the ground for six months out of the year. And quite often in the winter, when the leaves were off the trees, so it was easier to make your sightlines and things like that. And out of that, he got well toughened up, too. And so back in Virginia, back down in the tide water, he did what every good young man should do at the time and became part of the militia, the Virginia militia regiment. And when the Indian, the French and Indian War came along, that was his first opportunity to rise in the militia as a colonial serving at the side of the British troops. And then a long story unfolds out of all of that, starting with the fact that George Washington himself probably started the French and Indian War when he is sent north on one of his expeditions northwest to Pittsburgh at that time called Fort Duquesne to deliver an ultimatum to the French to get out of the Ohio countries because the British held claim to them. And the French, so he was informed were on their way to meet him and perhaps to attack him. And so he led a detachment of Virginia Colonials and Iroquois, I think it was Iroquois, I can't remember the tribe, led them to ambush the French and it happens. They opened fire on a gang of French down in a little canyon or a little valley. They capture them. The Indian Chief, Tana Kareesan, kills one of them who happens to be a French envoy to the British and out of that will grow the French and Indian War, which of course will lead to the French defeating the French and the British to pay for the taxes on the French or to pay for the war will raise taxes on the Americans. The Americans will rebel against the British and the British will wait a second here. The British will raise taxes on the Colonials. The French will aid the Colonials in rebelling against the British and in order to pay for that rebellion they will raise taxes on the French, which will lead to the French Revolution, which will end ultimately in Napoleon. All of that begins with George Washington's action there in the remote corner of Pennsylvania as the British historian Horace Walpole would later write, the actions of a young Virginian in the wilds of North America set the world on fire. And that's when the world first comes to no become aware of George Washington. I think it's in the year 1752 or so. So he's only 20 years old. He's a young man. So his ambitions had far-reaching things happen. I mean he made his mark even maybe not even expecting to a lot of the time. Well that keeps with the theme of that little bit of reading that I just gave you there, that character who's talking about Washington saying it's a small world we moved in. He means along the tide water, but the fact is that the population was of the whole world was much smaller at the time. And if you happen to be in the right place the right time you could make a much in a way a much larger impact on the whole human race than perhaps somebody in that situation would be today. And Washington was one who was in those positions for a long span of time and we were very fortunate that he almost always made the right decisions informed by the people around him and his concern with their respect or lack of respect for him and for his reputation and informed as well by that celestial fire called conscience. What is right and what is wrong? I remember years ago when you did an event at the Royal House in Medford you made the statement that we could have dispensed with any of the founding fathers and the country would fundamentally be the same. But if we dispensed with George Washington the country would be fundamentally different. How how why would explain that because I was I've been fascinated with that statement since you made it many years ago. It isn't so much that we the country would be different though it might be and I'll get to that in a second. But I see it as as an arch an archway that runs from about 1770 1774 to say Washington's death in 1799. That the arch of American democracy and you can take out Hamilton and you can take out Adams or Jefferson they're all bricks in this in this arch. But if you take Washington out he's the keystone he's the one who holds it all together not only because he brings south and north together as a Virginia planter joining with the north but also because he brings a certain awareness of politics and is a military leader as well and don't forget the world up until that point had always turned to military leaders in order to give the governance in times of revolution from the time of Julius Caesar and would again with with Napoleon shortly shortly after Washington's death. If you pull Washington out all the efforts of everybody else collapse because Washington many times during the American Revolution is the only guy who's holding it all together. Adams is off in England trying his best and Jefferson is doing what he's doing and so forth but only one guy is holding the army the symbol of American resistance together you know Congress is popping to from one city to the next in order to avoid the British and to avoid the the law basically the British law and so Washington is still there enduring and that's one of the key elements of his his powerful impact upon the era the revolution it's his willingness not not to quit to stay right there as the keystone but you know I do believe that America would look enormously different if it hadn't been for Washington because say there had been some other general and there were there were a couple of guys mostly British Charles Lee and Horatio Gates who thought they were as good as Washington who thought they knew as much as Washington and who who conducted themselves as if Washington was an amateur in their presence in some ways he was not he wasn't always the best military tactician that's for sure and Charles Lee himself who had fought on the British side and had now come over to the American side Charles Lee once said oh what I would not give to be made a dictator for a few months and then he could do what all of the other generals who had become dictators could do by overriding civilian authority and the thing is that Washington resisted the blandishments to become a dictator he resisted right up until the end of the revolution in 1783 he resisted calls from his own office's corps to make himself king he was furious about that idea why have we just fought in order to create another kingship another royal family we can't have that George Washington understood and feared as much as the people around him in Congress people like Franklin and Jefferson and all of them they feared the man on the horse the man who would come along and turn the heads of so many Americans by saying something like I alone can fix it I alone and the man who can lead you George Washington even though history shows that he really was that man never allowed himself to be seduced by that that idea and committing to the importance of democracy and to the to the importance of the Constitution and to the importance of a political structure that was as carefully balanced as the United States Constitution which is what Washington did at in the second half of his career in the political half when he became the president of the constitutional convention and then of course the president of the United States what Washington did there culminating with the fact that after two terms he happily handed over power and stepped away those are the gifts that Washington gives us that that save us from looking like what we might have ended up looking like just another just another bunch of colonists led by some tin pot dictator didn't happen thank god yeah thank you George let's revisit civility in this age is uh civility and decency important in today's digital world does it have a pot or is it recognized or what do you think I think that they should be they aren't always you know uh neither is honesty for that matter yeah and and it's essential I think in the life of a republic that there be some truths that we hold self evidence and that these truths uh whether we're talking about the grand theories of the enlightenment from the Declaration of Independence or whether we're talking about whether it's raining outside or not these truths can't can't be overturned with lies and when they're proven to be true you can't just double down and say well no the sun is shining when it's when it's pouring rain and we see that too much in our political discourse today we elected a man president whose major skill was inventing nasty nicknames for people and these are things that lead a lot of us to be very concerned about where we're headed in this country we've just seen two years ago a violent coup attempt on the United States capital itself and did this come out of a love and admiration for decency and honesty or did it come from some other source you know I've written the novel that we've talked about uh about the the tenor of the United States in the 1930s there was a great fascist uh send there were plenty of people who thought like the Europeans did in many cases the Italians and Germans that that a fascist government would be a good idea in this country they thought that in the United States in the 18th century and you know we see these periods of crisis uh in our country today and 50 years ago and back in the civil war we see these moments and we just have to rely on decency and and and honesty and all of the other virtues that Washington himself was a living embodiment of at least in the eyes of those around him because don't forget he could also be cranky and had a had a very uh a very sharp temper and things like that um we need we need to believe in those things and conduct ourselves as if a society is watching us in the same way that Washington with his awareness of reputation conducted himself with a sense that a society was watching him and so he'd better not disappoint you now did you when you were thinking about writing Citizen Washington did you did you ruminate uh like could they did you think well what about Citizen Adams what about Citizen Jefferson what about Citizen Franklin or was it always Citizen Washington in your mind well because of the idea of Washington as the Keystone I think that he was always the one that you'd want to write about uh if you were sitting down to write about one of those those guys and you wanted to tell the full story of the birth of America from the point of view of the revolution and the constitutional convention and all of the rest of it was actually uh David McCullough who said to me one night over dinner since I'd gotten to know him when I was writing that episode of the American Experience and he was the host of that show he said to me you know Bill there's a wonderful novel in the in George Washington and the Revolution and I thought yeah you might be right about that of course he went off and wrote 1776 about one year in that revolution and that's a fantastic book I went in the other direction and decided well if I'm going to tell the life if I'm going to tell the story of George Washington and try to get it his character what makes him tick and why he is such a paragon uh for Americans today as he was then I'm going to have to tell the whole story from beginning to end and so I created in Citizen Washington which by the way is it's not in print but you can you can read it uh through Kindle it's available as a Kindle or as an audio book um I tried to give you multiple perspectives on George Washington just as we have multiple perspectives on political leaders today um and uh that meant creating characters who were slaves who were Iroquois Indians who were Virginia planters along with Adams and Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and all of the other people who come later in his life who will all be young men when he's already achieved his level of importance as the United States as the general of the of the army the commander in chief so it was always Washington and then Lincoln I wrote about Lincoln as you know in the Lincoln letter some years later and uh and Lincoln would say um of Washington at some point I can't remember exactly what prompted him to say it but he said um without Washington there is nothing Washington is the the star that outshines us all there were one lots of wonderful quotes about Washington's celestial character uh after the battles of Trenton and Princeton in which Washington took a revolution that looked like it was about to come to an end uh there in the uh in the dark days of December of 1776 Washington was in a very bad state wrote to his brother I see the impossibility of serving with reputation I think the game is pretty near up uh he started making plans to go and hide out in the uh in the west with a small remnant of his army because the British it appeared were about to to defeat him and to wipe out what was left of the continental army and then in the amazing bold stroke on Christmas night of 1776 he leads his troops back across the Delaware they strike at the Hessians who have called them the country clowns who have no respect for them whatsoever he captures all of the Hessians in Trenton captures all of their stores and supplies and so forth uh and then a week later the British send a whole regiment after him and um they're coming down one road and he's leading his whole army around through a swamp back up to the Princeton uh where he attacks the British detachment in Princeton and wins another small victory in in Princeton and the American press such as it was goes crazy Philadelphia newspaper wrote if there are spots on Washington's character they are like spots on the sun only discernible by the magnifying powers of the telescope and that was how Washington by his his willingness ever to give up and a sane man would have surrendered to the fates that were about to engulf him I think um in that first or second week of December but Washington doesn't give up he keeps trying to find a way out he keeps trying to to endure comes up with that uh that Trenton plan the password the watchword and response for the night are victory you would say victory and I'd have to say if I was challenged to buy the words victory I would have to say or death and that was uh that was the way that Washington led the troops on December just it was actually December 24th he gathered them that night on Christmas Eve to hear at the riverbank uh being read to them words that he was moved deeply moved by the words of thomas pain writing in the american crisis and pain of pain was marching with the troops at the time and he was writing on a drumhead at night these are the times the tri-men songs the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot oh I can't remember the rest of it sorry I was going to impress you with with with no and it is a lyric um he that stands it now shall have the love of men and women for generations hence um it's it's quite amazing Washington had that read to his troops and then they went and attacked Trenton the next day um so I think that the uh the the importance of Washington's presence at every step along the way of his life the significance of it whether he's starting the french and indian war whether he's right in the middle of the the bratic massacre which is the major battle of the french and indian war at least in in the united states um or the colonies uh whether it's the revolution a constitutional convention or in the first presidency it's always the most significant role being played by anyone you know there's a wonderful quote from franklin in the um or many wonderful quotes from franklin in the constitutional convention uh they're debating this tripartite governing structure with you know judicial legislative and executive branch well who's going to lead the executive branch who's going to be the president uh and don't we all fear that whoever is the president will have dictatorial instincts uh this is the debate that was very serious in the uh constitutional convention and franklin looks at the chair where washington is sitting and washington didn't say very much in the constitutional convention he looks at the chair where washington is sitting and he says uh i know not what sort of man may follow but i can be sure that the first man who occupies the presidential chair will be a good one and you know washington it's basically made president by acclamation mostly because of the example that he had given in the in the revolution the uh the resistance that he had shown to the blandishments of power uh by achieving that by giving up power he achieved lasting historical fame and admiration it would have excoriated him in the revolution or during his presidency if he had decided to make himself a dictator uh he believed in civil authority and he believed in the constitution that they hammered out in philadelphia in that summer of 1787 uh bill um do you know the story of sarah bradley fulton of medford they're re resurrecting her spirit and she supposedly made the costumes for the boston tea party and um she went on a spy mission uh into boston through the troops in the middle of the night a very stirring story and delivered an important message to charlestown and um at the end of the war after the war george washington visited medford to thank her for her action uh during that time and uh on october 1st in medford for the second year they had a special celebration day for sarah bradley fulton but so even our little town of medford got a visit by george washington yes yeah well he visited a lot of places and um had a lot of impact in all of the places he visited and some in some of the places he didn't visit uh on his 1789 journey to america to new england uh he did he in his first year of his presidency he did a tour into new england to to basically show the presidential flag um had a nice banquet in fanuel hall which is the opening it's the first scene in my first novel the banquet in fanuel hall and there were three ways three main routes into massachusetts from the south uh at this time 1789 you either came up the lower post road which is now route one uh running all the way from new york up through connecticut and rhoda island and into massachusetts or you came the upper post road which was the fastest which came up to about route 20 or the mass pike and then straight west into into boston or you came on the middle post road which is basically route 16 uh and it comes up through connecticut and then sneaks into massachusetts and washington uh went up came into the city came into boston on the upper post road and he left on the middle post road he would not go on the lower post road and the reason for that was that the only state that had not ratified the constitution by the time that george washington was president the state which in some ways had it had been an instigator for the constitutional convention because of their their financial practices the state of rhoda island um which was printing printing paper money that was nearly worthless in order to pay its debts and that was part of the motivation for needing a new constitutional government so that the federal government could could control currency um washington was basically saying until you ratify the constitution i won't show my face in your state and so uh you know he he came even in his little journeys to places like medford or boston or rhoda island or anywhere else he was making a statement about the importance of of unity and of about the significance of the constitution that we had now all decided to adhere ourselves to well we could easily do another session for this bill thank you very much for coming here to tell us about george washington's life we appreciate it and learn some new things it's been great thank you very very much thanks john