Reviewed by Whitman H. Ridgway | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.2

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Reviewed by Whitman H. Ridgway | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Whitman H. Ridgway, University of Maryland, College Park

George Washington: Uniting a Nation. By Don Higginbotham. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002. 176 pages. $22.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). George Washington Reconsidered. Edited by Don Higginbotham. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. 352 pages. $55.00 (cloth), $19.50(paper).
The Founders are enjoying renewed scholarly attention. Major historians offer new studies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and the paragon of the genre, George Washington himself. Washington's legacy as a planter, soldier, guiding force behind the Continental army, and first president are well known. These two books promise to enhance readers' appreciation of his contribution as a committed nationalist and to portray Washington as a more complex individual than is often recognized.	1
George Washington: Uniting a Nation is a short, interpretive volume, appended by six original documents, which originated as a series of lectures. Don Higginbotham argues that historians have failed to appreciate Washington's consistent efforts to unify the nation, especially in the 1780s, and to counteract the pressures of regionalism, state sovereignty, and influence, both foreign and domestic. Drawing on his experience from the Revolution, Washington recognized that the nation would not survive without stronger central authority, which he articulated in his "Circular to the State Governments" (1783), and continued to advocate after that. Though Washington avoided open association with prominent nationalists, Higginbotham argues that he was a persistent proponent of a stronger national government throughout the 1780s. He was less concerned about his reputation when setting off to attend the Constitutional Convention than he was that such reform would be accomplished. As president, Washington reached out to the defeated Anti-Federalists as he had to loyalists after the war, and Higginbotham argues that policies sometimes attributed to Madison or Hamilton were his own. In sum, "from the moment of his appointment as commander in chief of the Continental Army to his retirement from the presidency over two decades later, Washington maintained his focus on American unity" (7–8).	2
George Washington Reconsidered is a collection of thirteen essays, almost all of which have previously appeared in print, with a historiographical introduction and headnotes by the editor. Inspired by the bicentennial of Washington's death, Higginbotham offers this collection as "a new trend away from mainline political and institutional history: an examination of the man: his family, his home, his agricultural pursuits, his slaves, his hopes for the West, and his attitude towards death and afterlife" (3).	3
"The Virginia Localist" section examines Washington's British lineage, his pursuits as a colonial planter and a militia officer, and his involvement with slavery. Martin H. Quitt, in the most intellectually engaging chapter of the book, examines the circumstances leading to John Washington's immigration to Virginia in 1656. Sometimes portrayed as a victim of religious persecution, Quitt argues that Washington's real motive was the pursuit of commerce, and that his experience in the tobacco trade enabled him to marry well and to be accepted quickly into the colonial elite. Bruce A. Ragsdale writes insightfully about the changing patterns of the tobacco trade in the 1760s and Washington's decision to abandon tobacco for grain. Washington, however, enjoyed several advantages other planters lacked: he managed his debt, and he was able to send tobacco to his London agent from other plantations, which funded purchases required for the conversion to grain production at Mount Vernon. Dorothy Twohig depicts Washington's growing dissatisfaction with slavery as a labor system even as he, like Jefferson, despaired of the social problems he anticipated in a postslavery society.	. . .

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