In December of 1896, William McKinley received a congratulatory letter from John Hay, the new ambassador to London, on his election to the Presidency. The letter included a gold ring with a few hairs from the head of George Washington. Hay wrote, “It is my confident hope and belief that your administration may be not less glorious and the memory of it as spotless, as that of Washington.” Years later, Hay would gift a ring to Teddy Roosevelt with a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair. But there was only one “spotless” president. 

Today, the memory of Washington is no less hallowed in the American mind than it was in McKinley’s day. From Cindy Crawford magazine covers to Dodge Charger commercials, Washington continues to shape what philosopher Charles Taylor has called our “social imaginary.” And due to his emancipating his slaves after his death, Washington has been spared much (although certainly not all) of the criticisms of his fellow Virginia slaveowner Thomas Jefferson. After Ron Chernow’s 900-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning George Washington: A Life (2011), it might seem there could not be much more to say about the “American Moses.” Historiographically speaking, the field of Washington studies appears like a well-maintained golf course rather than a jungle beckoning exploration. 

Nevertheless, in American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington (2026), the very capable and prolific historian H. W. Brands offers us the first significant biography of the founder since Chernow’s tome. While Brands adds some texture to Washington’s marble bust, his book does not seek to clarify one of the most pressing questions the current generation seems to be inquiring about the founders: how are we to reconcile the public virtue of these brilliant men with their fierce ambition as members of an elite and often slave-owning aristocracy? From the 1619 Project to the Gordon Wood-Woody Holton debate (over whether slavery was the “primary reason” that the colonists sought independence), the fundamental disagreement between conservative and liberal scholars essentially boils down to this: was George Washington disinterested or self-interested? Was he motivated more by a sacrificial sense of the common good or by a republican obligation to seek personal honor? While Brands presents both aspects of his life—unpaid general with honor-obsessed gentry—he makes very little attempt to explain exactly how these two personas coalesce in one man. The Washington who was “revered [for] his character” was also “jealous of his public reputation.” (432, 576) 

American Patriarch has plenty of strengths, to be sure. Brands, the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas Austin and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, has composed a relatively fast-paced work at roughly 600 pages. Tailored for a popular audience during America’s 250^th, the short chapters (there are 100) prevent even the most unlettered reader from losing their breath. One of Brands’ strengths as a historian is his ability to situate Washington both in a global context and in terms of his immediate peers. Along the way, the reader encounters the French and Indian War, the Pontiac War, the fall of General Montgomery to the British at Quebec, New York’s Dutch community, relations with the Wabash Indians on the Ohio frontier, and the resignation of the English Prime Minister, Lord North. 

And while international figures like Marquis de la Fayette feature prominently, the most impressive primary sources come from minor characters like Albigence Waldo, a doctor with the Connecticut regiment at Valley Forge, or William Howard, who was fourteen years old in Brooklyn when his bartender father was threatened with a bullet to the head if he did not assist the British through Lond Island. (320, 262) 

In American Patriarch, the plot moves along geographically and professionally. Washington goes from Virginia gentleman to frontier surveyor to disillusioned commander of the Virginia militia to general of the Continental Army to President of the newly-independent United States, and finally to American Cincinnatus. However, while Washington is always on the move in an ever-changing world, he develops very little as a human being or in his guiding principles. The book sometimes reads like a character study of a political hero rather than a window into a remarkable life. For instance, Brands is relatively silent about Washington’s marriage and home life (he did not have biological children). Religiously, Brands simply concludes that he was a “conventional Anglican” whose service to the church was “natural” and performed out of “duty.” While this was certainly not out of the ordinary in Virginia’s religious establishment, Brands does not offer much more than that Washington attended church “every month but not every week.” (148) 

With regard to Washington’s slaveholding, Brands does justice to the complexities of slave-owning in the late eighteenth-century world. For example, as Brands points out, Washington could not legally free most of his slaves because he did not technically own them himself (they belonged to the Custis estate through Martha’s first marriage). On the other hand, Washington also paid bounties for the capture of his slaves in the 1770s and several of them accepted Lord Dunmore’s offer of emancipation if they fought for the British. Brands has little else to say on this subject, returning quickly to the winter at Valley Forge (327). 

On one hand, the founder once expressed that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery (397). In principle, he believed in abolition through legal means and not by the kind of activism conducted by Quakers. On the other hand, after Pennsylvania enacted a gradual emancipation law in 1780, Washington made sure to rotate his slaves out of the state so as to avoid having to free them (397). Washington freed his slaves on his terms, not on Pennsylvania’s. 

Brands’s Washington is high-minded without being stoic, but his humanity is never exceptionally deep. In this sense, American Patriarch supports Ron Chernow’s contention that Washington was “more revered than truly loved.” Brands succeeds in giving us the accomplishments and the uprightness of a legendary public figure but rarely scratches the surface to analyze the heart behind it.

To his credit, the author is not silent on Washington’s religion. But these snapshots only raise more questions about Washington’s real sense of piety and personal motivation. For example, Brands acknowledges that “Washington often credited a higher power for his successes.” (266) He urged his fellow Americans to “implore [the] protection and favor” of Almighty God, spoke of an “Invisible Hand” and a “providential agency” in his inaugural address, and was clear in his Farewell Address that religion was “indispensable” for the future of the nation. (231, 426, 441) Yet, when asked by a reporter if her husband ever prayed, Martha responded with a bit of uncertainty. “She answered that she expected he did, but she did not know that he practiced it.” (325) To reports that Washington had been on his knees at Valley Forge, his wife did not utter any Amens. Whether he did pray routinely or at all, Brands does not conjecture. And whether his views of God, prayer, and family ever changed substantially over time (as they certainly did for the likes of Abraham Lincoln and others), we are left to wonder. 

Washington truly was an unassailable figure in his day (at least after the Revolution, during which he endured his fair share of criticism, domestic and foreign). In an age when it has become increasingly fashionable to discredit or even villainize the great men of the past, American Patriarch is refreshing for its balance of humanity and heroism. For example, while disabusing his readers of the notion that Washington’s retirement after two terms was purely disinterested, Brands affirms that his farewell really was intended at least in part for the good of the republic. (541) 

This latest biography of Washington is an excellent resource for those who wish to know more about his unimpeachable character and his unparalleled career as our nation’s “father.” But in a morally divided age, Americans want more than great men. They want good men. For those who wish to know why Washington acted as he did or who he was underneath his uniform, Brands’s work leaves the reader wanting to hear more about the founder’s personal battles and not just his military ones.