 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotch tank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation with David O. Stewart about his new book, Chronicling the Political Rise of George Washington. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up this month on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, February 17th at 1 p.m., Diana Schaub will tell us about her new book, His Greatest Speeches, How Lincoln Moved the Nation. Schaub analyzes Abraham Lincoln's three most powerful speeches, placing them in historical context and explaining the brilliance behind their rhetoric. On Wednesday, February 23rd at 5 p.m., Jonathan White will discuss a House Built by Slaves, his new book about how President Abraham Lincoln welcomed African Americans of every background into the White House from ex-slaves to champions of abolitionism. In researching the life of George Washington for his new book, David O. Stewart relied heavily on the correspondence between Washington and his contemporaries. Those letters and other writings have been preserved by the Founding Fathers papers projects supported by the National Archives through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. By visiting the Founder's online website, anyone can search through and read the writings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. In George Washington, the political rise of America's Founding Father, Stewart chronicles the growth of Washington from a young man with few prospects to a hero of the revolution and near mythic national leader. Throughout this transformation, Washington exhibited skill and political acumen. As David Stewart says in chapter one of his book, Washington's story is not one of effortless superiority, but one of excellence achieved with great effort. Writing for the Wall Street Journal reviewer, Barton Swame writes, Mr. Stewart has written an outstanding biography that both avoids hagiography and acknowledges the greatness of Washington's character, all by paying close attention to his rarely voiced but no less fierce political ambitions. After many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, David O. Stewart became a bestselling writer of history and historical fiction. His books include The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, The Summer of 1787, Madison's Gift, American Emperor, Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America, and Impeached, The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy. Lindsay M. Trevinsky is a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and a professional lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. She is the author of The Cabinet, George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Now let's hear from David Stewart and Lindsay Trevinsky. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I know I can speak on behalf of David and myself when I say that it's a delight to be working with the National Archives. We have relied so heavily on their sources, especially the founder's online resource that they mentioned. So it's a real joy to be speaking with you and a personal point of privilege. I have long cited David's work in my own footnotes and citations. So this is a conversation I'm really looking forward to. David, I think a good place to start is there have been countless books on Washington. I mean, it would be impossible at this point to even come up with a list. But you take a different angle in that you really try and view his life through the lens of political genius and political ambition. Why did you decide to take that approach? And why did you feel it was so important to center his political thinking and politics in his life? Thank you, Lindsay. And thank you, of course, to the National Archives, the founders online resource is just remarkable. And I could do most of the research for this book from home, which is incredible. We're all getting used to that, but it was great. I had done three books on the founding era. And when I went out to talk to people as in settings like this, people would always ask me who was the most important guy for the year. And I always had to say Washington. And after I did that enough times, it occurred to me that maybe I was missing the point and I should be studying Washington. And as you know, there's a lot. He's attracted a lot of attention. So I got transfixed by this fact, which is impressive that he won four key elections in his career for commander in chief of the Continental Army, for president of the Constitutional Convention and president twice. And of course, he won them, but he won them unanimously. And that's no mean trick. It's inconceivable today. It was pretty inconceivable in the 18th century. So I thought I ought to look at that and try to unpack it. And it's not that no one's ever thought about it, but I thought they hadn't thought hard enough about it. And that I wanted to understand where his political talent came from, how he developed it. So that was the concept. One of the things I think you do a really great job of is demonstrating that this was the success, this political success and electoral success was not by accident. Can you walk us through Washington's relationship with his own ambition, how it sort of emerged, how he managed it, occasionally disguised it and why we have to really focus on that part of him. It's a great subject. And I'm glad that you ask about it, because he was very skilled at saying he had no ambition. And I was very struck when I was reading the records of the House of Burgesses, which is not a universal activity among our contemporaries. But when the Royal Governors of Virginia would come speak to them, they almost they always did the same thing that Washington would do is almost word for word, the sort of thing he would say, which is, I am not worthy. I am not equal to this task. Please overlook my errors. Understand they're just errors about head, not at the heart. And some of it is we have to understand is the time. That's what you did. It was uncool to be grasping and ambitious. And so he was, he would not appear that way. But he was intensely ambitious. These things didn't happen by accident. The best example to me is when he shows up at the Continental Congress. He knows they're going to choose a commander in chief and he wears his uniform. It's it's not very subtle. But he carries it off. When nobody writes home, you won't believe this big allude walking around in a uniform all day. So he wanted the respect and to have the stature and admiration of his peers. He always said that was the most important thing to him. But that also involved your position in life. And he needed to achieve that. And so he was pretty single minded about it. And, you know, this is a guy who worked incredibly hard lifetime of 12 and 14 hour days. Some of that was because he just liked achieving things. But he had these goals and he wanted to be remembered. And he did achieve that goal. I love that you brought up the uniform story. That's one of my favorites as well, because it's as you said, it's so not subtle. And, you know, it's like, pick me, pick me. And I just I think it's so funny. So I don't want to jump ahead chronologically too much, but I did want to follow up with your ambition question about the presidency. I think you very astutely note that several points. He says, I'm not worthy and I don't really want this position, but I'll serve if you, you know, if you really make me or if you really want me to. Do you think that was true with the presidency as well? I mean, I have no doubt that he wanted to be elected if he was going to run. He didn't want to lose. But is it your sense that he actually would have been OK if there had been someone else that could have served or did he really want that position? I think he wanted it. And I think he wanted it, especially for the first term. I think his decision to go to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was in essence recognition that he did want to be president and a sort of a statement of that that he was, you know, he had announced he was retiring forever from the army and from public life. And he sort of adhered to that for a couple of years. And then he gets kind of soft about it. He still, you know, says it every now and then. But he's weakening and he sees the country sort of going down the tubes. He's very upset about that. And he thinks maybe he could help and he looks around and he sees a lot of fallible humans around him and his alternatives. And he wants that job. And, you know, we have to retake with a lot of grains of salt, his protestations to the contrary. I feel differently about his second term. I think he really didn't want to serve a second term. And he was smart enough to know the second term was going to be a lot worse than the first. But he got talked into that. And, you know, there's a sense of duty. He started down the road. He should finish the job. Ego, of course, plays some role. He was not immune to that. So that's a tougher call for him. I think the first time it was something he really wanted. I always wonder, and I wish we could ask him how much of it was that he wanted to be president and how much he was convinced that he was really the only person that could serve that role. Of course, that's speculation. But I always kind of wonder about that. Yeah, it's a great question because everybody told him he was the only one who could serve that role. So we tend to buy that also because the folks who were telling him were pretty smart. And they were there and we weren't. So I tend to credit that. And I think if we can pass the alternatives, it's sort of like when they picked him as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, he was not a spectacular choice for that. But boy, the competitors were horrible. And, you know, for President John Adams is a smart guy, but he's a very different guy. He has a different profile in the country. It's not really well known in a lot of places. Washington's the hero. I mean, there's just nobody like Washington at that point. Yeah, I really agree. OK, so let's go back more towards the beginning. I'd love to ask your opinion about his relationship with his mother, Mary ball Washington. This has been a subject of a lot of scholarship recently. And some people argue that she was by far the most important person to him and was this influential figure that shaped who he would become. And then on the other end of the spectrum, people sometimes dismiss her as sort of a nag that, you know, he just kind of wanted to get away from. So where do you think she, as much as we can tell, based on the, you know, the evidence left, where do you think she fell in that range? I try to put her in the middle. And that's not just my disposition. We, you know, her reputation has yo-yo'd a bit for about a century after his death. She was the American Madonna who had given birth to Washington. I mean, my God, what greater service could a woman perform? And then sort of the middle of the last century, people started noticing that their letters back and forth were kind of testy and that she was not she was no pushover. She was a strong woman and she had views, not political views, but about her life and her arrangements for it. And we don't have a lot of information about her and we have to recognize that. We do have a few accounts that suggest she was, in fact, a fairly intimidating person and maybe a good deal like her son, her eldest boy. And I think she probably instilled in him discipline, which was a huge factor and characteristic of him, his life. She may have helped him become a great horseman, which by all accounts, he was. But he had other mentors, his father, we see very little role for him. He was in England some of the time in George's boyhood. He was a way working for a mining venture. And George never really spoke of him, except to say he didn't much know him. So we can't draw that picture, but we do know that his elder half brother, Lawrence, who was 14 years older, was a giant influence after his father died, George was 11 when his father died. That his neighbor, Colonel William Fairfax, was a critical sponsor for his young years. And so he got mentoring. He got surrogate fathers, and they were terribly important to him. Lawrence's portrait still hangs. And George hung it in his office in Mount Vernon as long as he was there. And they still have a copy up there now, which I think is just a wonderful thing to see. I always, if I'm there, I always try to go see it. Because it's an act of sort of loyalty, which I find touching. Well, I think the people often miss is that he spent a lot of time. It wasn't just that they were figures in his life and he loved them, but he spent a lot of time visiting at their homes, actually away from from Mary's home. And it wasn't uncommon for him to be there for really extended stretches of time. And that's a part of his life that I think is so essential for what comes next in terms of his surveying career and the military piece. I agree that that's important. He he I think he and his mother probably struck sparks because they were similar people. I think he didn't much care having to look after his four younger siblings, which he probably was asked to do. And things were a lot more exciting. You know, Lawrence got the good property, which becomes Mount Vernon. Even he renames it Mount Vernon. So it's it's much nicer, frankly, than where George was living with his mother right next door, although it's a couple of miles away, because that's how the land was. Are the Fairfaxes and they are exotic and sophisticated cosmopolitan people from England. And it's just a whole lot more interesting there. So he does spend as much time as he can there. Lawrence sponsors him and hauls him along. Lawrence had married a Fairfax daughter. So he too had gotten aboard the Fairfax train. And he clearly told George to do it. And it was interesting. George told his younger brother, the one he liked best, John August. And he was called Jack. He he said gave the same message to Jack to, you know, stay close to the Fairfaxes. Absolutely. Well, the Fairfaxes were pretty instrumental in getting him some of his early positions, including, as I mentioned, a surveyor and then helping him ingratiate himself with some of the leaders of the Virginia Colony, such that they appointed him some some pretty powerful positions for a young man in the lead up to the Seven Years War. There's so much we could discuss about that that experience, including the fact that maybe Washington was responsible for kind of starting the global conflict, but what do you think were some of the big takeaways that he learned from this experience? Because one of his great strengths was his ability to learn from failure. So this was a pretty big, pretty big period of time in his life. Yeah, he gets a and we'll skip over how because it's our time is limited, but he gets a lot of responsibility at a young age. And he's commanding the Virginia regiment at twenty three and twenty four years old. And it's actually more responsibility than he can handle very well. But for three or four years, he works very closely with the British hierarchy, with the British military. And his assignment is to fight the Indians and sort of the French, but it's mostly the Indians. And he learns a few really important lessons. First is he I think he learns the notion of leadership with men. He's got a big problem with desertion. Nobody likes being out on the frontier. They're freezing. They're not well fed. So he's got to figure out how to command loyalty and inspire these guys. He learns about the rude realities of military life, which include logistics and supply and, you know, the things you got to get right or you're not going to ever make it to a battle. He also develops a tremendous respect for Indian fighters. He can see that they are just the experiences. They are just way better at forest warfare than any British British person or a Virginian. And he's always bothering people to back in Williamsburg to please, you know, send me some Indian fighters. And that's an interesting quality that he has. He respects them tremendously. He also just two quick things. He sees that the British are fallible when he is with them. They lose some really bloody battles. So he doesn't have a the mystique in his head that the British are unconquerable. And he also can see in part of the theater of the French and Indian War, he was involved in Western Virginia, Western Pennsylvania. The whole game was to get control of the Forks of the Ohio, which is now Pittsburgh. That was the strategic center. And as I just said, the British basically lost every battle. But then they took the Forks of the Ohio finally. They just sent enough men and lasted long enough that they got the key strategic wins. So I think he learned that, you know, you lose a battle, it's not the war. And that was a really important lesson to believe in when he got to the Revolutionary War because he lost a lot of battles there, but he did win the war. He did. So after his experience with the British, he eventually turns away, at least for the time being, from a military career and assumes that he is no longer going to find his future glory with the British military. What really caused that shift? And what was he hoping to have happen instead? Well, he had he had wanted a big military career and he had dreams of greatness and, you know, have valorous exploits. It wasn't working out. The British army did not want him. He was a lowly colonial and they treated him that way and he didn't care for that. And so it just got through to him that, you know, that was not a career. It was not a future and Virginia had no military tradition. So there was no way to be the leader of Virginia's military. So he chose another route. He decided as near as we can tell. And he's such a non-confessional figure. He never writes down and he's not Thomas Jefferson writing notes to himself. You know, now I'm going to do this. Now, you know, this is what just happened to me. You just have to infer it. But he resolves to develop Mount Vernon, which he now has gotten control of. Lawrence has died. Lawrence's widow has died. Lawrence's daughter has died. So now George owns it to develop that as a major sort of front window demonstration of Washington's worthiness and also to go into politics. That that's the available route for him. Colonial Virginia had a lively political life. It was only open to the upper classes of society. But he had access to that largely through the Fairfaxes. So one of the contributions that this book makes, I think, is so important is it does really focus on the years between his time in the military with the British and then when the Revolutionary War starts. And usually most biographies will maybe have a paragraph about the development of Mount Vernon and then a paragraph about his very valuable marriage that he makes during this time. You want to really focus on this period more. Why is it so important? And what are you hoping that readers take away about this section? Well, I was struck that when he is sort of crashing and burning as a military leader in the French and Indian War, he's failing on the frontier. It's not his fault. It's an impossible job, but he is failing and he's feeling terrible about it. He behaves badly and he starts getting sarcastic and really insulting with the colonial governor, with military figures. He tries to end run them. He jumps the chain of command, which is the worst thing. It's a terrible thing to do, but it's even worse if you get caught at it, which he was. So he just made a bunch of mistakes. And then when he shows up again in 1774 at the Continental Congresses, and that's 16 years later, he's gotten older and we all hope we get a little smarter as we get older. But he's George Washington. He is good. He knows what he's doing. He is uncontrolled. And I thought, well, you know, there's more going on there in that period than people have been willing to give him credit for. And when I look closely, I really became persuaded of that. He spent 16 years in the House of Burgesses, the legislature. And, you know, that's longer than he was a military commander. He spent 10 years or so ahead of the church vestry, which had public responsibilities in Fairfax County. And he also was a justice of the Fairfax County Court, which is something you can read a lot of Washington books without ever finding out. And he had that job for six years. It had some judicial responsibilities, which I suspect he deferred to the lawyers on the court as much as he could. But there are also a lot of administrative responsibilities, managing the tobacco trade, managing other economic things, building roads, building ferries that played right to Washington's strengths. I mean, he was an administrator at heart. He was terrific at getting stuff done. And I think it was a terrific experience for him. Dealing with people, understanding and getting a better sense of building consensus and getting people to a decision point. Again, that's something you do in the legislature all the time. And, you know, he starts out as a real backbencher in the House of Burgesses and then slowly works his way up. And then the last few years, he's kind of a rocket. He's really becoming a significant legislator. And that's that's a really interesting process for a guy who is not a good speaker. Nobody ever said he was. And which in our story was how you made your net sort of earned your bones in the House of Burgesses and who was not particularly well educated. He was always shy about that, embarrassed, actually. But he only had three or four years of formal education. And compared to people like Madison or Jefferson, you know, they had languages, they had real knowledge. He was a self-taught guy in many respects. So to succeed there was, again, his hard work and discipline. And he had some personal talents. He understood, you know, he was a very presentable guy. He had a very affable guy. We don't think of him that way. He doesn't look like it on the dollar bill, but all his contemporaries would often, they often used the word affable. He was a good company. He liked to play cards, liked to ride the hounds. He could be fun. So you talked about how in the last couple of years of his legislative career, he started to take off and and took on more authority and more power and more influence. That is a time when there's a lot going on in these legislatures and across up and down the coast. So what role did he play in the revolutionary movement? We typically credit John Adams and Samuel Adams for really being the firebrands behind independence. How did Washington get involved and how much of a firebrand we see? Yeah, we don't usually associate firebrand with Washington and I wouldn't play for it. But it's a good way to phrase it. Massachusetts people were ahead of the curve and they were pushing the confrontation. And Virginia was kind of lagging and I think Washington felt in his heart some vestigial anger with the British after his previous experiences and also thought that they were wrong about the on the taxation issue. He was very upset about that and at a relatively early point in 1769, when the conflict is sort of rekindling, he writes an interesting letter where he basically says I'm prepared to go to war. And that's a long time before anybody else's. And so I think his sort of determination and strong views on the conflict was attractive. What drew people to him, he was sure of what he thought he always advised his younger relatives who went into politics, don't ever speak until you know what you think. But this was something he had thought about and he knew what he thought and he thought the British were wrong and that America, the colonies should not accept the terms the British were insisting on. So he assumes leadership within the House of Burgesses and in Fairfax County he has become the leading citizen. There's an episode with these resolutions adopted in Fairfax called the Fairfax Resolves which were very important, very aggressive again, essentially threatening to go to war. And he's associated with all that and he gets the leadership credit. The Fairfax Resolves just quickly, you know, they're mostly written by George Mason, his neighbor and another leader. And Washington does it with him, but it's really Mason's pen. But when it is issued and when it appears in all the newspapers in the colonies, the only name on it is George Washington. So he was good at getting credit and that's not a small talent in politics. No, it's not. And it's one that he really excelled at in a very subtle sort of way. He was able to sort of pull the strings behind the scenes to make that happen. Yeah, it doesn't hurt to be tall. No, it doesn't. And you know, I think, you know, to your point about him being a very presentable figure, the qualities at the time that were valued being a good horseman was was right up there with the social skills. So I'm actually, I apologize for the interruption. I'm giving you all a historic assessment of what it would have been like to live at Mount Vernon with Washington because I have an American fox hound. And as we've learned, he loved to ride to the hounds. So I want to make sure you guys don't feel left out from the historical sights and sounds. It's a multimedia presentation. I appreciate it. It is. It is. So, you know, I was saying that he, you know, he was this brilliant horseman. And that counted for a lot in terms of his presentation. Yeah, even Jefferson, who could be a little snarky about Washington described them as the best horseman of his age. And Jefferson was very good. So he was something special, and he was a great athlete. And he had the presence and the demeanor, the presentation that impressed people. And he had this gift. And I did fall back on this phrase probably more than I should have. He had a gift of inspiring trust. And that is invaluable. And at the end of the day, that's kind of what politicians need to inspire. So true. So he arrives at the Continental Congress. He is wearing his uniform. He is striking. He walks into the room. He, you know, everyone kind of notices him when he comes into the space. He goes on to be appointed the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. He's then with the Army for the next eight years. What about this time? Why is he so valuable? What is his main real contribution to this time period? You know, I think his greatest contribution, and I'm not sure this is terribly novel, but is holding the Army together. I mean, we have only two national institutions at that point. We're not quite at nation. We have Congress, and Congress is a mess. We've had some very talented congressmen in the first year or two, but then everybody gets bored with that. And we have some pretty mediocre people there who don't always show up. And so the Army is the game. And he's got the same problem he had in the French-Mindian War. They're not paid well. They're not fed well. They're not treated well. They're not terribly good soldiers. And he needs to hold them together against a very tough adversary. He needs to figure out how to get them paid some of the time or fed. And he manages that. Now, he also fights the war. He wins a few battles. He loses probably more, but he, again, commands respect and trusts the men form a bond with him, which is remarkable. I mean, soldiers today, I think, would not put up with the conditions that the continental soldiers had to put up with, or as John Lawrence referred to them as our dear ragged Continentals. They really had terrible times, most of the time. Just were ill. They lost so many to sickness. And he did keep that Army together and fighting when it had to. And that was a great achievement. Your point about the trust that he instilled in other people for him was one that his contemporaries, I believe, observed as well. And at one point, Congress started calling the Army Washington's Army because the soldiers loved him so much. And the officers were so loyal that if Congress tried to take him away from the Army, they knew that the Army was going to completely disintegrate. So I didn't feel that you overstated it. And I do think it is a very important part of his leadership, especially in the military when conditions were so bad. And we should recognize that a big part of his job was getting along with Congress. He was never able to go talk to them. So it was all through letters. He sometimes got Congress congressional delegates to come visit the Army, which he tried to do so they would know how terrible things were. He had to deal with governors. He had to deal with local pubas. And he spent a lot of his day doing politics. And I've had military people tell me, well, you know, that's what life in the military is, is politics within the military. So, you know, those skills did not go neglected. Well, he was in the Army. No, and that's so important because he was, it was not only that he was trying to maintain sort of emotional support from these people, he was trying to get funds, he was trying to get more troops. He was trying to get, you know, everything under the sun. And his most common complaint that I found in letters were that Congress expected him to make bricks without straw. So that was just a constant, constant battle and back and forth and push and pull. You know, it's hard to have that kind of thing. The Revolutionary War is, we've only had two wars where we had to fight them on our own ground. Civil War and the Revolutionary War, I guess you can count the war of 1812, but it's such a smaller conflict. It's not good. You know, your people are suffering and they don't have a lot of money to pay taxes. They, when you come and take their chickens or their livestock, you are impoverishing them. And he hated to do that, but he had to do it some of the time. So it's a really difficult thing to do. And, you know, it was a very hard eight years. It was, I think that's the name is we forget that it was that long and that he was with the Army for that long, you know, we've been living through this pandemic as a crisis for two years. And it's felt like a really long time. And I've personally spent most of it in my office, which is a far cry from the winter camps that the Continental Army sent their time in. So it's, it's important, I think to remember that. Indeed. So the war does finally come to an end in 1783. And Washington, it goes home, as you said, he intends to become a private citizen, at least for a while. And then is either reluctantly or willingly pulled back into the fray. What do you see as his big contribution to the Constitutional Convention? He, of course, was there. Why does he matter? Mostly, his presence is the essential role. Everybody knows this will be his Constitution, and he's endorsing it by being there. I think when I've worked, when I looked at this, he had three things he really wanted out of the Constitution. He wanted an executive branch of the national government, which they hadn't had. He wanted the power to tax to be in the national government, which it was nominally in the Articles of Confederation, but not really. It was impractical. It had to be a unanimous vote of every state. And he wanted to have the national government be supreme. We had a terrible problem with the states fighting each other and contradicting each other and taxing each other during the period after the war, and he just thought that was crazy. We're not a nation if we live like that. So those are the things he wanted, and everybody knew that's what he wanted. So those are the easy problems at the convention. There was a lot of fighting about other issues, important issues, but he stayed above that mostly, which was his preference. He did not like to get into debates. He wasn't comfortable with his own sort of nimbleness of intellect. And so he presided, which was, for him, the perfect place to be. I often wonder how awkward it must have been for the people present to be discussing the contours of the executive branch and the powers that would be given to the president or the restrictions on power or what would happen if the president acted poorly given that Washington was sitting there in the room and every single person knew that if the Constitution was passed, he was going to become the first president. It must have been pretty awkward conditions to be operating under. Yes. And there are a couple of delegates who wrote afterwards that the Article 2 of the Constitution reads as it does because Washington was there and nobody wanted to sort of say, well, what if the president's a monster? Because there he was. And, you know, I think we can see the relatively unconstrained power given to the presidency is probably the result of that. It didn't much matter the first 70, 80, 90 years of our existence because we weren't set up for a powerful executive. The country didn't want it. But when there were needs, when the case could be made for it, boy, we have discovered the executive is very powerful. Indeed. And I think so many of those lack of limitations with a lack of written limitations were at least initially partly based on that trust that you just asked about a willingness to kind of let him figure it out once he was in office knowing that he'd already given up power once and probably wasn't going to become a tyrant. Yes, Franklin tried to frame it by saying I'm concerned about the second man who'll be president. But it didn't really prompt a lot of soul searching. No, it didn't. It didn't really work. I also think that they were just tired and maybe ready to go home. So there's probably some of that too. Some of that. So after the Constitution is passed and ratified, then Washington is, as you said, unanimously elected president. He goes on to serve two terms eight years and then retires. What strikes you as the most important contributions he made as the first president? Well, there's a powerful symbolic role he plays. I was talking about how few institutions we had in the revolution. We still didn't have many. We were futzing around about a flag and a seal. We got a national anthem 140 years later. This all takes a while. But what we had was George Washington. And he'd won the revolution by gum. And so that made him essential. And he understood that. And he undertakes two basically three journeys through the states to show himself, to connect with the people. And he learned some stuff about different parts of the country that he might not have known otherwise. But principally, he's just letting them see him so he can inspire trust. And I think that's the single most important thing he does is he understands that. In the middle of one huge controversy, and this is over the J Treaty in his second term, opposition is developed and they're screaming bloody murder that he's giving away the country and betraying our friends the French. And the issue is what will he do with the treaty? And he issues this statement that today would be viewed as the thinnest sort of problem that I will study the constitution and compare it to this treaty and I will determine if they're consistent. I'm paraphrasing madly, but that was the point of it. And it was no more than three or four sentences. And everybody said, wow, that's great. We're all set. Washington's going to see what's right and he'll do what's right. To have that kind of influence, to have that kind of statues, what every president would like. But he also had a great sense of timing. He didn't say that originally. He waited for the thing to bubble along. And when he thought the time was right, he issued that statement and it worked very well. So he had a talent. And a sense of timing is, that's not something you learn in books, that's something you learn by being in politics. And I think he had that and he showed it as president at several important occasions. You mentioned when he came into office that we had so few national institutions and I would say really a lack of a sense of nationalism even. Have we ever had another person, one person fill that sort of role in American history? Or because as our nation has developed, other things have taken on that symbolic importance, is that something that we can't really wrap our minds around? Well, I think once we got political parties, it became impossible. The ones who've come the closest are probably FDR during World War II. But Jesus, 44% of the population still voted against him. Lincoln in the Northern states, but he still had 44% voting against him. And they weren't even counting the South. So even the people we think are great leaders, were great leaders and were. It's nobody had the stature that Washington did. And a lot of it is the moment. You know, that was an extraordinary moment. And what I give him credit for is recognizing it and knowing how to deal with it. And look at all the revolutions that go the wrong way. Most of them. I think Washington is greatly responsible for the fact that ours did not end up either in an extreme of sort of sort of excesses like the French Revolution or despotism. One of the things that I still like about your book is you don't pull any punches about how important he was and unparalleled he was, but at the same time really push back against any effort to deify him and talk about that his contemporaries use the word affable. So what do we lose when we forget some of those more fun and enjoyable and humane aspects of his personality? Why is it so important not to treat him as a sort of godlike zero figure? I think it's partly because we just deny him his humanity. I was very struck that he wept in public on several occasions. I was moved by a letter he wrote when his stepdaughter dies. She was just 15 years old and had epilepsy, had suffered terribly, but she just keels over and it's a terrible moment. And he writes movingly about it. After his brother Jack dies, months later he writes, I'm having trouble. I apologize for not getting back to you, but I lost the friend of my lifetime, my brother. I think his emotionalism was open and helped him connect with people. I think he had an emotional intelligence is what we would call it today and that made him accessible. He also had a nasty temper. He knew it. He tried to control it. And you know, there's some ugly moments, apparently. He was not, I mean, he's a big guy. He was not above slugging one of his slaves. And that's not a very attractive experience. I think he also, and this is my overactive imagination, but I think if you have a large person with a reputation for having a bad temper who is struggling to maintain his temper, that's a very intimidating moment. And suddenly you sort of want to do what he wants you to do. And I suspect he knew that and that he could use that to his advantage. Oh, I have no doubt that he used his physicality to get his away when it served him. And I'm glad that you emphasize that. So I have one more question that we actually have had a couple come in through the chat, which is great. So glad listeners have some good questions here. So my last question is if you could pick, you know, as you said, Washington did not often write down his thoughts and or his motivations for doing something. And he sometimes has to surmise why he makes choices or he burned the letters, which as historians drive, that's absolutely crazy. But if you could pick one moment where you were a fly on the wall to get a little extra insight about why he was doing something, what would that one moment be? I'm led in a biography of Robert Morris by Charles Rappelier about a dinner that Morris, who was the great financier of the Revolution, hosted at the end of the war. And there were just three people in attendance. It was Morris and George Washington and Thomas Paine. And there you've got in one room the money guy, the guy with the army and the guy with the words. And, you know, maybe it was a dud of a night. Who knows? But it has always struck me that I'd love to hear them talk about, you know, just sort of unbuckle and say, geez, you know, back in 79, I really thought we were done for and talk about, you know, who really drove them around, drove them nuts. And I've said to you before, if I could write a play, I'd love to write a play about that evening. It seems to me that, you know, when you want, you can talk about this stuff in a way that you can't until then. And they were none of them was particularly good friends with each other. Oh, Morris, Morris and Washington got on well, but not with Paine. And, of course, Washington's the only one who didn't end up in prison afterwards. I just think that would have been a singular occasion. Yeah, that would have been been a great moment and love to have known what they talked about. So one of the questions that we received is you emphasized his 16 years in the House of Burgesses and that he wasn't he didn't start off as being one of the big figures and he wasn't necessarily an oratory genius. Who are some of the big influences on Washington? Who helped him become a leader in the legislature? Who shaped his thinking? Who did he rely on? Well, he very much followed the lead of the speaker of the House, a man we've forgotten named John Robinson, who was a very powerful figure. He was also treasurer of the colony at the same time, which gave him immense power. The governor has often felt that he was more powerful than they were. And Robinson, by all accounts, was smart. Washington, I think, learned from him. Peyton Randolph was the successor of his speaker. I think he always maintained good relations with Randolph and respected him. Edmund Pendleton was a prominent legislator who was also a terrific lawyer. And there's at least one episode where Washington can't get a bill through that he really should be able to. And he just turns it over to Pendleton. And Pendleton saves the day. So he always had a talent for picking out good people to work with. He had a great eye for talent. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, he knew when people were smart and he had no problem sharing the stage with them and wanted to. So I think you saw that in the in the House of Burgesses as well. So our next question is about Washington's political ambition. I'm glad so many people are interested in the subject as well. And wanting to sort of understand how it relates to Abraham Lincoln's. Was it as strong and pervasive? And they mentioned in particular Blumenthal's book, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. So if we look at those two figures, how do they compare to one another? Lincoln's good friend said something about him like, you know, the ambition was the little engine that would never stop with Lincoln. And it certainly was the same with Washington. There is this period, the interwar period, when he's back in Mount Vernon with Martha, they're they have her young children. When he's not sort of trying to get ahead in the world every day. But by the time the conflict with Britain stirs up, he is. He's doing it all the time. And I think they're comparable. You know, they're comparable in some interesting ways. They are both immensely taller than most of the people around them. They also both kept their own counsel. Lincoln did not sort of blithely offer opinions. He fought hard about things. He worked them out often in written form, which is a difference from Washington. And they stepped carefully. That is, you know, the mark of a good politician. And I think they both were. But I think they were certainly equally ambitious. I try to dissuade people from thinking that Washington was, to the manner born, that he was an aristocrat who was born with massive wealth and all the rest. He had advantages, absolutely. But not like that. But we do have to recognize that Lincoln came from nothing. And he is, in our tradition, a totally self-made man. And, you know, so you get a few extra points for that. I was going to emphasize the fact that they were also both primarily self-educated, which I think helped shape who they were. And at least for Washington, I'm always struck by volunteer purposes. He should have been a forgotten footnote in a history book. If his father hadn't died, if his older brothers hadn't died, who knows what might have happened. And so I always kind of get the sense there's a little bit of, I don't know if you want to call it providence or fate or something. But there's certainly an element of luck involved in some of these things. If Lawrence lives, it's a real question, his older brother Lawrence, real question in my head whether, you know, George would probably have had to wait his time. And Lawrence wasn't going to give that up. And he was an ambitious guy himself. So, you know, it could be a different story. I totally agree. What surprised you most in your research? What was the biggest or most shocking find that really changed the way you thought about this process? You know, and it sounds so simple, but what I was talking about with his emotional accessibility that, you know, he's such a marble figure to us. He's just, you know, I quoted some guy, I can't remember it exactly, but you know, he's a man, he's made a marble and he's ultimately tedious. I mean, that's how we tend to think of Washington. And in reality, he was so different. This was a guy who was out working the field, he was trying to figure out how to run his farm smarter. He was desperately fighting a war for eight years. He was engaged in combat, you know, psychic or political or moral, all his life. And he was just a powerful personality and not this austere, immense figure that we tend to see him as. And so that is, I think, something I'm trying to get, I tried to get across in the book and I hope people come away with. Well, this is a great, we have just a couple of minutes left. This is a perfect last question because of course, where the National Archives are located. Someone wants to know how was Washington involved in the Compromises 1790 that set the location of Washington DC? Well, I take a somewhat minority view of that. There's, if you've watched the Hamilton show, which is wonderful, I love it, but it portrays this dinner that supposedly Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton were at and they made the deal to pay off the debts from the war and also then to put the capital in Washington DC, what becomes Washington DC. I suspect there was such a dinner, but the thing that people have ignored for centuries now is everybody at that dinner was working for Washington. You know, Hamilton and Jefferson were his appointees. They served at his pleasure and they were carrying out his tasks. Madison was at the time his closest political confidant and his representative in Congress, and not formally, but effectively. So this is just Washington's team figuring it out. It's not, you know, they're making some compromise. They're just trying to scheme together and come up with a plan. And I always come back to the old Latin phrase, Cui Bono, you know, who benefits, who got what they wanted out of the deal. You know, Hamilton didn't like having the capital down here in DC. Madison and Washington didn't like repaying the debts. I'm sorry, Madison and Jefferson didn't like repaying the debts. The only guy who got what he wanted in every respect was the boss, Washington. And that's what should happen. The boss should get what he wants. And that's what they did. So I think it's important to keep an eye and there are other factors to reinforce my view of this, but that is the part of the story that I think needs to be emphasized more. That's such a great point. And I love the idea of the boss getting exactly what he wanted in this particular instance. I think that's actually a perfect way to end things that, you know, Washington got what he wanted. Washington DC is where it is. National Archives is in Washington DC, which he would have approved of because he believed very much in federal institutions for the preservation of history, culture, memory, and education. So thank you so much, David. This was such a pleasure to chat with you and thank you again to the Archives for hosting us. It's a fantastic book. I encourage everyone to read it and I think they will enjoy it very much. Thanks so much, Lindsay, for being part of this.