LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON - 5 Volume Set

THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE AMERICAN FORCES, DURING THE WAR WHICH ESTABLISHED THE INDEPENDENCE OF HIS COUNTRY, AND FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

COMPILED UNDER THE INSPECTION OF THE HONOURABLE BUSHROD WASHINGTON, FROM ORIGINAL PAPERS BEQUEATHED TO HIM BY HIS DECEASED RELATIVE, AND NOW IN POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, AN INTRODUCTION, CONTAINING A COMPENDIOUS VIEW OF THE COLONIES PLANTED BY THE ENGLISH ON THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMERICA, FROM THEIR SETTLEMENT TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THAT WAR WHICH TERMINATED IN THEIR INDEPENDENCE.

In his will George Washington bequeathed to his favorite nephew, Bushrod Washington, his personal letters, private papers and secret documents accumulated during a lifetime of service to his country. When the bequest became known, many of the literary men of the country were proposed for the commission to write the authorized life of our First President.

Bushrod Washington's choice fell upon John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. To him he handed over all the precious papers left him by his distinguished relative. George Washington and Marshall's father, Thomas Marshall, were boyhood companions, so John Marshall knew "the Father of His Country" as a neighbor and friend from his earliest youth, and served under him in the Revolution.

If it be true that it takes a great man to interpret the life of a great man then Bushrod Washington made no mistake in the selection of a biographer. For Marshall, under the influence of Washington, came to be nearly as great a man as the character whose life and achievements held his deepest thought for nearly a quarter of a century. Certainly his services to his country rank close to Washington's. Marshall's sympathetic understanding of his subject, his first-hand knowledge of events with his remarkable powers of expression qualified him to produce the masterpiece that has come down to us.

Seven years were spent in preparing the first edition, published in 1804-07. The work was based chiefly on Washington's own diaries and letters and secret archives and it told not simply the epic story of this great life but the truth about the birth of our nation. Marshall later spent fifteen years revising the first edition, verifying to the last detail every chapter, page and paragraph of his monumental work.

Washington's personality lives on in John Marshall's great biography. He still has the power to raise up men to greatness as he did during his lifetime. The precepts, the principles and the shining example of this foremost of self-educated, self-made Americans have the power to uplift and start toward new heights of achievement, all who come in contact with him. The work is now reissued in the hope that it may give his countrymen of the present day the benefit of the counsel, the guidance and the inspiration that has proven so valuable in the past.

Excerpt from John Marshall's Preface:

A desire to know intimately those illustrious personages, who have performed a conspicuous part on the great theatre of the world, is, perhaps, implanted in every human bosom. We delight to follow them through the various critical and perilous situations in which they have been placed, to view them in the extremes of adverse and prosperous fortune, to trace their progress through all the difficulties they have surmounted, and to contemplate their whole conduct, at a time when, the power and the pomp of office having disappeared, it may be presented to us in the simple garb of truth.

If among those exalted characters which are produced in every age, none can have a fairer claim to the attention and recollection of mankind than those under whose auspices great empires have been founded, or political institutions deserving to be permanent, established; a faithful representation of the various important events connected with the life of the favourite son of America, cannot be unworthy of the general regard. Among his own countrymen it will unquestionably excite the deepest interest.

As if the chosen instrument of Heaven, selected for the purpose of effecting the great designs of Providence respecting this our western hemisphere, it was the peculiar lot of this distinguished man, at every epoch when the destinies of his country seemed dependent on the measures adopted, to be called by the united voice of his fellow citizens to those high stations on which the success of those measures principally depended. It was his peculiar lot to be equally useful in obtaining the independence, and consolidating the civil institutions, of his country.

We perceive him at the head of her armies, during a most arduous and perilous war on the events of which her national existence was staked, supporting with invincible fortitude the unequal conflict. That war being happily terminated, and the political revolutions of America requiring that he should once more relinquish his beloved retirement, we find him guiding her councils with the same firmness, wisdom, and virtue, which had, long and successfully, been displayed in the field. We behold him her chief magistrate at a time when her happiness, her liberty, perhaps her preservation depended on so administering the affairs of the Union, that a government standing entirely on the public favour, which had with infinite difficulty been adopted, and against which the most inveterate prejudices had been excited, should conciliate public opinion, and acquire a firmness and stability that would enable it to resist the rude shocks it was destined to sustain.

It was too his peculiar fortune to afford the brightest examples of moderation and patriotism, by voluntarily divesting himself of the highest military and civil honours when the public interests no longer demanded that he should retain them. We find him retiring from the head of a victorious and discontented army which adored him, so soon as the object for which arms had been taken up was accomplished; and withdrawing from the highest office an American citizen can hold, as soon as his influence, his character, and his talents ceased to be necessary to the maintenance of that government which had been established under his auspices.

He was indeed, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow citizens."