His Excellency - Joseph J. Ellis

A landmark biography that brings to life, in all his complexity, the most important and perhaps least understood figure in American history - George Washington.In the pantheon of America's founders, there were many outstanding individuals. And yet each of them - Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Madison - acknowledged Washington to be his superior, the one and only 'Excellency'. Drawing on the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, Joseph J. Ellis paints a full portrait of the man's life and career - from his military years through his two terms as President.Ellis illuminates the difficulties the first executive confronted as he worked to keep the emerging country united in the face of adversarial factions. He richly details Washington's private life and illustrates the ways in which it influenced his public persona. We look inside Washington's marriage, and his subsequent entrance into the upper echelons of Virginia's plantation society. We come to understand that it was by managing his own large debts to British merchants that he experienced first-hand the imperiousness of the British Empire. And we watch the evolution of his attitude toward slavery, which led to his emancipating his own slaves in his will.Throughout, Ellis peels back the layers of myth, allowing us to comprehend Washington's true character and the magnitude of his accomplishments. When Washington died in 1799, as Ellis tells us, he was eulogised as 'first in the hearts of his countrymen'. In meticulous detail and lyrical prose, Joseph J. Ellis has given Washington the biography that his stature demands.