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>> well, i start the book with gilbert stuart painting him for one reason. it became the iconic image of washington. and stuart who was a genius as an artist was essentially in the same business as i am in terms of trying to penetrate the mystery of george washington. and itches fascinated by his tourts but i was fascinated by his comments on washington because he spied another washington lurking behind that very kind of reserved facade. he saw a man with a tremendous force of personality. in fact he said that if washington had grown up in the force he would have been in the fiercest among the savage tribes. and the people who knew washington best did spy that

same personality. someone who was much more moody and temperamental. we tend to think of washington as this rather bland but worthy character, kind of soft shoe character and he was anything but. there was a tremendously fierce will that furnace of his personality under this very reserved facade was boiling all the time. >> you say in your prelude to this book that you wanted a fresh portrait. after all that's been written about george washington, how did you go about finding a fresh portrait? >> hamilton had a feud with washington late in the revolutionary war and hamilton quit his staff and wrote a series of very perceptive letters where he said that washington was moody and actually something of a powder keg. and i can remember being absolutely startled because i had read so much about

washington but these were significant dimensions of his personality that i felt had been overlooked by previous buy ogfers. and the more that i read i saw that in fact he was a man of many moods, of many passions of fiery opinions. but because it was all covered by this immense self-control, people didn't see it. and i think what hah we've done in the very laudable desire to ven rate washington, we've sanded down the rough edges of his personality and we've ended up making him bland and even boring a bit. and people at the time saw washington as this very dynamic and charismatic figure. and i would loove for contemporary americans to share that kind of excitement that his contemporaries shared. i have to pay tribute to the new edition of washington's papers. the university of virginia

starting in the late 1960s began to publish new edition obvious his papers. every year another volume or two appears. they've now published 60 of a projected 90 volumes. to give you an idea of how much more information there is now. the old edition from the 1930s was based on 17,000 documents. the new edition is based on 135,000 documents collected from archives all tover world. and what's wonderful about this, you not only have every letter written by or to washington published in sequence but you have lavishly antated letters where you get extracts from letters, diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts. and so really using this new edition i had hundreds, maybe thousands of eye witness accounts and it really made me feel that i could possibly do what has been so difficult for folks to do with washington to

bring him alive as a three-dismentional character. you would know what he looked like, how he sounded, how you thought he would be that real to you. because he was a very reserved, in many ways repressed character, it is subtle. you have to tease out this personality. but we have so much anecdotal material that i feel we really can try now to recreate the man. >> here's a couple things you read right away. yet, that he had a clossal temper. how did you find that out? >> there was one cabinet meeting where jefferson said that washington lost his temper. he had been shown a cartoon that showed him being gee teened the way louie the 16th. and everyson wrote in a memium that washington lost his temper and had difficulty for several

minutes regaining his temper. and people had noticed these before but thought they were more incidental to his personality. for me it suggest suggests more all of these emotions boiling under the surface. one said he had passions boiling in his breast almost too mighty for any human being to control. this is very different than the way we see washington but those close to him see this tremendous intensity which would periodically like a volcano boil over. >> you said he was proned to tears. >> there are many times, again, the evidence is everywhere in his story. we all know the story about his fair well to the officers at the end of the war, there were 30, 40 officers say standing there. he says washington hugs them

and there were tears in his eyes. i was struck the number of times in writing the book how many times contemporary observers noticed tears in his eyes of this tremendous emotion that he was fighting off. he was a highly emotional man but he was somebody who was always very reluctant to show those emotions and i think that someone who was always afraid of becoming a captainive to those emotions so he became an almost overly controlled person nalty. sort of emotionally muscle bound. >> you say he was a man of fierce, irrelevantable disposition. >> i don't want to overstate that side of it. i am stressing that simply because i felt that was the overlooked dimension. this was also a man who in his dealings with political associates, with military officers, could and often was exquisitely sensitive and

courteous. i don't want to paint a portrat of him as tirncal but as somebody who was very, very sensitive in dealing with people. and he had a tremendous sense of tact and courtesy, really an capemple particularry figure in that way. so this was a very complicated man. this was a very tough nut to crack soshe logically and psychologically. >> in this day and age, what makes you think a 900 page book will sell? >> i think that at the moment people are very disenchanted with american politics and i think that they are looking for heroic figures from america's past and there's no figure who is more heroic or fearless or courageous than george washington. but what i tried to show in the book, almost in a novel, this is something that very slowly and gradually happens in his life. washington as a young man, although there's this amazing

perseverence and doggedness, you could see glimmers of future leader. he is somebody pursuing money, status, and power. he is not a particularly attractive character, but he so transcends his past, so enobaled by circumstance, that under the pressure of the revolutionary war and the constitutional convention, these monumental challenges bring out this greatness. and this is a man who ends up so much greater than anyone would have predicted who had read about his adolescence or adulthood. so this is a tremendously inspirational story at a time we all need a little bit of inspiration. i think the american people is pretty depressed at the moment. >> i want to have you do a snapshot of several places where he was in his life, and we'll come back to some of these. what did he do around boston?

>> in boston, he goes up in july 1775 and he takes control of the continental army. he has just been appointed commander in chief, and his presence there was extraordinarily important because the continental army was really composed exclusively of new england militia. so one of many reasons that washington was chosen, having a virginia planter as commander in chief suddenly gives a continental perspective to the continental cause, which is most certainly did not have before that and it's a moment where the red coats, the british ra bottled up in boston, they're really under seige from the continental army and washington manages to drive them out of boston and he has his first great victory, maybe a little bit of beginner's luck because then he has an enormous amount of difficulty duplicating that fete. >> new york. >> ok. he goes to new york and that's

where he suffers a string of disasters. the battle of brooklyn, the british expeditionary force, the largest of the 18th century is about to pounce on the continental army, not only wipe it out, wipes the whole revolution out and washington evacuates the army, flees up to northern manhattan. unfortunately it's not the last disaster. washington loses twin forts on opposite sides of the hudson, fort washington and fort lee, and this begins this long bedraggled demoralized defeat across new jersey and across the delaware river into pennsylvania. >> philadelphia. >> ok. what happens is that because the there was always a fear that the british are going to take philadelphia, washington and his troops first fight the british at brandy wine creek hoping to stop them. it's one of the battles, unfortunately, that washington

blundors because of faulty strategy and intelligence. he was far from a faultless military leader. the british occupy philadelphia and occupy it until the spring of 1778. >> and washington. >> washington, d.c. >> washington, d.c., virginia, mount vernon. >> let's start with washington, d.c. because under the residents act of 1790, the residents act specified a 65 mile strip along the potomac where the capitol might be. it's actually george washington who gets on horse back who picks the spot where washington, d.c. is going to be. and of course there was a certain amount of grumbling at the time because coincidentally or not it was very close to mount vernon where washington owned 8,000 acres. and it's not accidental that the white house stands where it is because it faces south towards mount vernon. >> something that you spent not

a lot of time on but enough time that i wanted to ask you more about it because i had never thought about this. we already talked about the teeth and that the teeth are there at mount vernon to see. but what i never thought about explaining this is that because of this contrappings that he wore in his mouth he had a hard type speaking. >> this is not again a trial aspect of washington's life. and not only because of the pain that it caused him. by the time that he was naug rated as the first president, he had only one tooth left. lower left buy cusspid hanging on. he had a complete set of den turs made and there was a little hole drilled so they were held in place by that one tooth. the way that the upper and lower dentures were connected was through a coifed metal spring at the back. the only way they stayed at the mouth is that the person had to keep the mouth and the lips closed because what happened as you opened your mouth to speak

the pressure was released on that curved metal spring and there was a possibility that these would come flying out of your mouth. and i think that one reason among others why washington as president tended to keep his speeches very short, he must have been very, very self-conscious. he was also a very la conic person who was not given to long-winded speeches anyway. but you can imagine how distressing it was for a man of washington's pride to always have to worry in any social occasion that these dentures would slip out of his mouth. >> any history of when? >> when he was in his 20s, during the french and indian war. at the very end of the revolution, he has a french dentist comes to the continental army head quarters to work with washington. and washington was so self-conscious about his bite

that he thought people would mock it in some ways that he doesn't even enter that this dentist is coming, as if he is meeting with some master spy and he can't record it in the rolls. then he had a dentist in new york named john greend with when he was president. and when he corresponds with green wd he never uses tell tail words like teeth. if he sends him dentures, he writes, i received the items that you sent lest someone find out he was writing about his teeth. so here's a man who was so self-conscious. for us it creates this enormous sense of passion. i at the academy of medicine i

saw one set of his dentures. when you see them and picture them rubbing along the gums day after day, you realized how agonizing it must have been to have those in your mouth. it was gruesome. >> you talk a lot about health. for instance, i wrote down, washington suffered cruely from hemorrhoids. what impact did that have on him? >> by the time george washington is 30 years old, he has had smallpox, malaria, disentry. in the 18th century if you lived to 50 of 60, you probably lived to 70 or 80. there were so many epidemics. washington was a very hearty specimen who was able to handle these. his family died early.

it probably gave him some sense that he was going to defy the odds in his family and he dies at 67 which is much younger than the next five or six presidents. but by the standards of washington males, washington is unusually long lived. >> but on the hemorrhoid question, the reason i bring it up is you say he traveled lying down during these times. >> you know, he had disentry in the french-indian war during the famous defeat of general edward brad doc and -- braddock. and it caused diarrhea and it was very painful for him to sit on his horse. and so it was an extraordinary example of washington's bravery riding in this battle. he was tall, he was a very conspicuous target on the horse and he actually took four bullets in his clothing, i think one in his hat and three in his coat. he had two horses shot out from

under him. and a minister, samuel davies said it looked like the heroic used george washington was being preserved by providence for his country. which was one of the great calls for any servant in his history. >> you said nobody touched washington. >> washington didn't like to be touched. there's a story perhaps apock fall that it makes the point that at the constitutional convention that hamilton and the governor were talking about whether this was true. and hamilton dared morris to touch him, made him a bet that he would not go over and actually touch washington. morris went over and gave washington a slap on the shoulder and said how are you today, general in and washington apparently turned and gave him a withering glare that he never forgot. again, we don't know that this story is authentic, but

certainly people were shocked when washington was embraced. for instance, lauf yet, who was like a surgot son, many stories of laveyeth embracing washington, in one case giving him a kiss across the case from ear to ear. but the fact that people recorded this was an expression of shock that someone was behaving of this familiarity. and washington had a way of signals that you do not act familiarly. he sent out messages to his subordinates was not to be overly familiar with your subordinates. >> you also said he didn't shake hands. >> again, when he had the reception as president, he would kind of go around the room and he would just nod to people. whether this was borrowed from royal practice because royalty

didn't touch people we don't know. it certainly was alleged by his political enemies that this was an aping of royle ways, which was a common criticism of the opposition party. but he had this sense of personal dignity that was very much part of his power and very much part of his mystique. washington would never make it as a politician today because he didn't press the flesh, he was not this back slapping character that you have to be in politics today. but i think that there's something very attractive about the formality and the dignity of the man. >> you mentioned, paid tribute to james fletch anywhere who wrote lots about george washington and douglas freeman. what do you have in your book that they don't have in their book? >> number one, my book is based on the new edition of the

papors, so i have probably somewhere five to ten times more material to work with. they were both great writers. freeman was a demon of researchers, as you know. he was a virginia newspaper editor. but i think also the conception of biography has changed quite radically over the last century. in the time freeman is writing or the fletch never is writing, biography is still the public record of a public man. so now when we read a biography, we expect it to be a rounded portrait of the private person as well as the public person. for instance, i have a very detailed portrait of his marriage to martha. not that those writers were incapable of doing it, it was just considered of lesser importance. i have a very detailed portrait of washington as a slave holder. that again was seen as kind of more incidental to the life of

a great man. so that there are various dimensions of the private man to be sure that you wouldn't find in those biographies. >> speaking of that slave question, there's a note that you make back to the teeth issue, where, if i understood it right, george washington bought teeth of negro slaves for his own use? >> one of the wonderful cure ators down at mount vernon discovered that washington bought eight or nine teeth. he just marked in his book from negros so we don't know if that meant from his own slaves. and i should explain that the dentures were not made of wood. people thought it was wood, it was made of ivory, either walrus, elephant. as that ivory aged and stained, it took on a granlar look that when you look now might be wood. but they were actually real teeth inserted into the

dentures. and so we don't know this for a fact but now that this has been discovered that he bought teeth from negros, which presumably meant slaves, he may have had in his mouth teeth from his own slaves. this may sound slightly ghoulish but in the 18th century this was acceptable. dentists advertised in the newspapers and bought teeth from people. so if you lost a tooth, you would sell it. so it's not quite as ma cab as it sounds. but it sounds quite startling that washington might have been walking around with teeth from one or several slaves. >> any idea what the first run is? >> i think large. i don't know the exact amount. >> 50, 60, 100,000? in the past you've sold a lot of books. >> it would be more than

100,000. >> you've done a book on jp morgan, the war birds, on alexander hamilton. which of those books were the most successful? >> actually the grass keeps rising. each has been more successful at least in the commercial standpoint than the one before. and what i've tried as an author is to keep broadening my focus to stay fresh. a number of people have commented that george washington book is actually the first one that doesn't have a large financial or economic dimension. and that's true. i found what was happening after i did morgan and the war berg and rock feller that i was being stereo typed. and i would go give a speech, do vanderbilt next, as if i would spend the rest of my life knocking off edge moguls.

with it would lead me into constitutional law, foreign policy. and i think with each book you have to try to expand your range as a writer, otherwise you go steal. so i'm hoping people who read the priest book won't mind with washington there's not a very big financial or economic dimension. >> when did you actually start this book? >> i started this book six years ago. so this is a record in terms of the amount of time that i spent on it. i have to say, even though you would say it is a very long book, i felt that i was writing it on the back of a postage stamp because the books that i had in mind, the standard references on washington, the freemans the flex nevers, the freeman book is approximately seven volumes, about 4,000 pages, flex ner is about the same. and what i noticed, because there have been a number of

wonderful books on washington but what i noticed is people were either doing a year like david mcculla's wonderful 1776 or the terrific washington's crossing. they would do a specific event. or the book his excellencey, but the gap that i saw in the literature was the single volume, cradle to grave biography that was authoritative and would be all encompassing and would really try to not only present a fresh portrait but to be a sintsdzthiss of all of the new documents and all of the new scholarship about washington. so i don't know whether i succeeded, but that's what i set out to do. >> where did you spend your time along the way? >> most of the time i just spent in my home office, because usually what i would do is i would travel to archives and sit there wiping the dust

off city records and straining my eyes to decipher hand writing. where in this case i was able to buy these 60 volumes of the washington papers. i supplemented that with 17 volumes from the old edition. i did go to almost all of the major revolutionary war battlefields. >> how much of that did you really read? >> of those volumes? i can honestly say i scanned every page. i can't say that i read every word of every page but i did scan. you know, you develop sort of instinct as an historian in terms of seeing what is significant or what might be useful. you know what i couldn't do. there have been since george washington died 900 biographies. i couldn't read every page of every biography and i decided i would focus more of my time and attention of going through original materials rather than traipsing through every single biography that had ever been

written about washington. >> in your book and near the ebbed you also pay tribute to your deceased wife who died in the middle of all this in 2006. hard question to ask, but what did that do to this whole process? >> well, this is the darkest period in my life. my wife and i were together for almost 28 years. and in addition to being the most wonderful wife a man can have she played a very important part in my career. she was my muse, she was my confidante, she was my in-house editor. every night over dinner we would discuss the book and she would ask me a question that would send me scurrying back to the books. i used to read the books aloud to her and she was the perfect proxy for my ideal reader because she wasn't afraid to suddenly interrupt me and say, i didn't understand that word. or honey that line isn't clear.

or even sometimes, honey the book is dragging a little bit in this section. so she was absolutely invaluable. i was very grateful to this book because itches working on it during -- i was working on it during the final year of her life and then after i lost her the book gave structure to my day. i was lucky every morning i opened the door and i stepped through it and i was in the 18th century, which was a nice escape. and remember, george washington is a great story of someone coping with adversity. what fortitude means, will power, patience, forgiveness, acceptance, all of these different qualities that you see in washington's life. so he was actually a pretty good roll model for me to have before my eyes. but it was tough. >> so how long was she sick?

>> well, she had ovarian cancer off and on over a four and a half period. >> so what did you do after you lost her? how did you fill in that space with that editing help every night? >> it was hard. i guess, you know, particularly my life is so solitary. but of course i would have valerie there at breakfast, i would have valerie there at dinner. so it was a solitude surrounded by this extraordinary marriage. the solitude became quite harrowing when suddenly she wasn't there. and i just was very, very fortunate in having terrific friends and family members. i think that by the time i lost her, you know, when you've been with someone for so many years you've internalized that person. so i found that as i was writing washington i began to say to myself, i would hear her

in my mind saying, honey, that sentence isn't very clear. and in fact, what i did, sometimes, i would carry on imaginary dialogues with her and i would imagine her kind of saying things and asking me different questions. but it was very hard. and i was -- i was actively worried about this throughout the writing that there was some very significant dimension here, my writing career had been lost and could i produce something that was worthy of the earlier books. >> you mentioned earlier that you spent a lot of time on washington's marriage. >> yes. >> where did that relationship start? >> well, it started back in 1758. washington was going to williamsburg to consult a doctor. he had a friend, richard chamber lynne who knew this young widow martha dand ridge cusstiss, who was living in a

house called the white house. i kid you not. and she was this wealthy widow. it was sort of a whirl wind court ship. they met only one or two times before they decided to marry. and therefore in the book, i don't think it was the lustiest more romantic marriage in history but i think it was one of those marriages that ripend into a very deep friendship. and i think that martha washington is absolutely invaluable to george washington. she gives some financial security, she was extraordinarily wealthy as a widow. she gave him emotional support. and he really needed a confiddant he was a reserved character. she was a real social asset. she was a great hostess, very good conversationalist. and you have a sense with washington, as happens with single men, that once they mary, they go from having a

kind of rootless life to being settled. and god knows, washington, who is going to achieve these monumental things really needed a very settled home life to do that, and marttedsa gave that to him. >> so we might as well throw salary fairfax in. you -- sal li fairfax in. >> right on the eve of his marriage, he is infat wutted with one of his best friends wives. sarah sal li fairfax who was the wife of george william fairfax, who was not only a close friend. they occupied bill voir, but the fairfax family, which controlled the northern appropriate 5 million acres between the potomac and the rap han yak river, the fairfax

family, they were washington's sponsors. so he is doing something quite rashor and he writes a letter to sally, pretty much a declaration of love which she rebuffs. you know, i conclude that had this had to have been an infatuation rather than what i would call love. and i argue it this way. that infatuations can cool rather quickly when circumstances change. if it had been real love, it would have endured. the fact that it didn't endure we know because george and mafertsdza washington become very close friends with george williams and sally fair fairfax. and there are periods where the fairfaxes and the washingtons actually traveled together. they vacation together. i think if george washington had really been in love with sally fairfax and that had been

an enduring form of love, the idea of traveling for a couple of weeks with your wife on the one hand and the woman that you loved on the other hand would not have worked out. so there is no question that he was smitten and there is no question that he writes in what is a declaration of love. but i think that it fairly quickly cooled into something else. >> what document survived the letters of exchange and all that from that period? >> unfortunately we have more of the letters that george wrote to sally rather than we have very few that sally wrote to george which might supply some of the gaps. and it's really based on a small handful of letters that were discovered only, i think they came to light maybe in the 1950s. and of course people were very shocked by this. but again, as i argue in the book, george washington was a very passionate figure. and as i also try to show in

the book, he was very attentive to women. the aphrodisiac of power already existed in the 18th century and i have many, many quotes in the book of beautiful young women swooning around washington at various assemblies and balls. and washington taking very careful note of those swooning young women. >> some of the things you wrote about his person, never able to express these forbidden feelings of rage. he learned to equate silence and a certain manual stoledty with strength. >> washington had one of the more difficult mothers of all times. she was a very crusty,dom nearing, very self-centered woman who you would think that the mother of the father of our country would have all sorts of quotes from her, taking pride or pleasure in her son. we really don't have any.

and in fact she was constantly critical of george for neglecting her and washington, we have quite a number of his letters to her. he always writes to her in this very correct but rather frosty tone. and you could just tell that he is pressing this rage against his mother. and i argue it's a kind of psychological speculation that he first learned to govern these powerful emotions in dealing with his mother because he was really never able to openly express the hostility that i think he felt toward her. >> how long was she in his life? >> she was there a long time. in fact, she is still alive when he becomes the first president. and she dies even though she had never gone to new york to visit him. in fact, she didn't seem to have attended george and martha's wedding. we have no evidence that even

though she was living in fredericks,burg. we have no evidence that she went to visit mount vernon. which is very peculiar because he was the most duteful son and husband imaginable. and everybody loved martha washington. who i think could get on anyone's good side. but there's an episode i describe in the book relating the revolutionary war. washington gets a letter from the speaker of the virginia assembly saying dear general, there's something going on here i think you should know. your mother has been in the state capitol lobbying for an energy -- emergency saying that she had been abandoned by her son. and washington of course feels completely humiliated, immediately sits down and writes to his brother, please go talk to mother.

you know how much money i've given her. please get her to stop saying these things. well, that was really quite a public rebuke that to have the commander in chief's mother seeking poverty relief from the virginia legislature. quite a story. >> did he have any close friends? >> that's an excellent question, because he had many friends. but i don't think that he really had friends maybe in the sense that we think of today. we think of a friend as someone whom we have a confessional relationship, where we really bear our souls. and washington was a very wary person and took a long time to win his trust. he would only very slowly let down his guard. so there are figures that he knows throughout his life. his friend dr. james craig who was not only his friend but the family physician. craig is there starting at the french and indian war, and the moment that he died.

so it wasn't that washington was a solitary figure at all. but it's a very different kind of figure from the other founders in that way. >> who did he -- you take us through the different relationships that he had with everybody from madison to jefferson, monroe, all the rest of them. but who did he have the most difficult relationship with of all the founders? >> i would have to say john adams because even though john adams was the first vice president, washington was the first president, john adams is rather conspicuously excluded from the inner council. occasionally you will see letters passed between them on different issues. but adams starts out at the second continental congress as really adams who is in many ways the most influential advocate of george washington to be commander in chief but then there's a lot of sniping as the years go by and adams who was always worried about

his place in history is pet fid that he is going to be upstaged by two people, benjamin franklin and george washington. and he makes a very funny statement later on. he said when the story of the revolutionary war is written, it will be benjamin franklin striking the ground with his lightning rod and out sprung george washington and there you have the whole thing in a nutshell. and he was not wrong of course that washington and franklin would receive this tremendous adulation. i think that one important thing in terms of washington's relations with the other founders, he has much better relations with the founders of the previous generation like franklin, who must have been about 25 years older, has much better relations with those of the younger generation, madison and hamilton, who are about 20, 25 years younger. more difficult relations with his age peers, adams is i think three years younger, jefferson

is about 12 years younger than washington. and this is true during the revolutionary war, too, that washington feels competitive with his age peers and on some level feels threat, where as he has much better relations with both older and younger men. so >> i did some of my own calculations. i found almost no one who was over 50 and some of these folks were in their late 20s, early 30s, and taking on this whole revolution. >> it's amazing alexander hamilton becomes aid de camp to george washington he is only 22 years old. by some calculations even 20 years old when he becomes the first treasury, secretary, and de facto prime minister. this was a unique moment in

history. of course population was younger than they would be now. so you wouldn't have a political system dominated by people in their 50s and 60s. this is also, a unique period of history where there was a tremendous need for youth and vitality and creativity. we had a war to fight and we had a constitution to write and we had a government to create. these are thing that is required an enormous amount of energy and imagination. and people had that kind of creativity and you see this in the careers of both madison and hamilton, they're very drawn into politics and they rise rapidly. of course the need was there. >> was he a humble man or a man that liked the big white horses leading him into the community? i'm reading here his request of the personal guards and that they be a certain height. explain that story. >> this is a rather bizarre

story. washington decides that to create a personal guard early in the revolutionary war to guard him also to guard his papers which he always lovingly tended. ok. he tells his officers that the man he wants for this guard can't be taller than 5-10 and shorter than 5-8. this seems a rather strange position in the middle of the revolutionary war. then the following year, not satisfied with that, she issues a -- he issues a new set of orders that they can't be taller than 5-10 or shorter than 5-9. so he is looking for an almost hollywood uniformity o. and i point out repeatedly in the book that washington put tremendous store in personal appearance. it is a mark of your inner order. and so, but again, he had grown up, he spent, remember, more

than five years in the french and indian war, had been exposed to a lot of british generals and i guess had their followers and their staff. but it is rather strange that he did that. >> so you say that he went to every state after he became president. >> right. >> but that when he would go into a community, he had -- what was the group that would precede him and if way he wanted to come in. >> it's very interesting because during his first term as president he decided he would visit all the the northern states and then southern states. he traveled from town to town by carriage but he would always bring along a white parade horse. and when he was a mile or two outside of town, he would dismount, get on the white parade horse and enter town. why did he do that? he had a great sense of showmanship. he knew he looked great on horse back. it's not coincidental that we

have all these stat tues of george washington. he had a theatrical sense. but on the other hand, he feels so burdened by his own celebrity. you know, this same man who rides into town on a white horse will then inform us in his diaries that, let's say the following morning in leaving he learned that a procession of dignitaries would accompany him out of town and washington would write i got up at 5:00 and left before this escort could accompany me because he tired of all of the adulation and the receptions and he constantly had to make speeches and make nice with people. and he was not -- he had many virttus but one virtue that he did not have as spontaneity. nowadays we think of a politician who can on the spur of the moment come up with a funny anecdote. george washington was not like that and it was a torment to

him wherever he went, not only do people want to see him, but that they wanted to lionize him and he got very, very tired of it. so whatever ambitions he had as a young man, and his ambitions were quite enormous as a young man, he had more than his fill as time went on. and then he began to feel oppressed by the whole thing. >> when did you -- back into this. when did you know almost nothing about washington? in other words, when did your process about learning about him start and when did you begin to change your perception? >> it was really, the hamilton was the first 18th century book that i did. and i can remember saying to people that hamilton is the protag nist of the book but washington is the hero of the book. i was very impressed by the way that all of the other founders became partisans for particular cause. all of them get sidetracked into very petty, sometimes very

vicious personal disputes with each other. george washington is the one person who keeps his eye fixed on the goal. and that impressed me tremendously when i was writing the hamt iten book because hamilton and jefferson become consumed by this almost pathological hatred of each other and that leads to the formation of these two parties. and here's george washington who is always trying to rise above the fray, not unlike president obama he gets into office hoping to be nonpartisan president, hoping it will be kind of reasonable and civilized discourse and learned exactly what president obama learned, that it wasn't going to happen. >> money. taxes. you point out that his taxes were in arrears from 85, 86 and 87. >> yeah. i was quite shocked by that. one of the paradoxes of washington, it's commonly said he was one of the richest men,

maybe the richest man in the colonies. whether he was or he wasn't, one thing that i'm certain is that he was land rich and he was certainly slave rich but he was cash poor. i discovered that he had to borrow money to go to his own ininauguration in new york in 1789. at the end of his second term as president he has to borrow money again to take his family and slaves back to philadelphia. so this is a man who is constantly weighed down by concerns over money. it runs throughout his entire life. and unfortunately, like a lot of the virginia planters, he was not only constantly in debt but he was a real spend thrift. he was a compulsive shopper, george washington. >> at the time he had the most land, how many acres did he own? >> washington by the end had at least 40 or 50 acres.

mount vernon, which consisted of five separate farms was 8,000 acres and on top of that he had about 50,000 acres out west which he was constantly trying to sell to pay off his debt. this sounds like a lot but at the time there were a lot of people who were amassing ladge amounts of land. and in fact, one of the washington's grievances against the british empire is that at the end of the french and indian war they banned settlement west of the alleghany mountains. and there were a lot of virginiaance like washington who were snapping up all of this land and they felt that the british empire was suddenly thwarting their ambitions. and there was no ambition that burned more brightly in the breast of a true virginiaen than land. everything revolved about land. >> we talked about health. with you thing that popped up was the tumor. >> washington during his first

two years in office, twice almost died. the first time a tumor appeared on his left thigh and he began running a high fever. at the time it was thought it might be the cutaneous form of anthrax. probably was an infection that turned into a car bunkle but they feared for his life. that he found it very painful to sit. they actually reconfigured his coach so that he could lie down. and they cordoned off the streets outside the executive mansion. they sprinkled it with straw so there would not be any noise that bothered washington. and it did flair up again a couple of years later. and then there was an episode that the following year where washington had either flu or pluresy that then develops into pneumonia. again, he is sick for several weeks. everyone has written him off. and then miraculously he

survives. so that was quite something in the first year or two of the new government. >> how much in those days did the public know about all of these illnesses that he had? >> well, the press kept a very discreet silence on both occasions and did not immediately saying in. of course they knew that the executive mansion was cordoned off. i'm sure there was a lot of gossip going on. but the press didn't reveal that until relatively late in the process. so at that point, the press was still protective of a politician's privacy. but that would change very rapidly. not only change in our own time, change very rapidly during washington's presidency. >> and the second hour of this two-part series we're having, we're going to talk more about things that are in the book. but we've been talking about things in the book but i'm talking about the different erass. but leading up to that, i went

through and found the number of pages you devoted to each section. you devoted 88 pages in the front. what was the purpose of calling that section the front tiers man? >> there's so much of washington's life spent on the frontier. not only fighting in the french and indian war, but from the time he is 15 or 16 he is acting as a surveyor in the frontier area. and washington also has this vision for the time he as young man of america what became america expanding to the west. and so i wanted to then draw the contrast to the second section when he becomes a planter and he's living a much more genteel kind of life, at least inside the mansion at mount vernon. and point out that this was somebody who shuttled very easily between the world of the back woods and the world of the -- he was quite a universal character.

>> the next section is 278 pages devoted to the general. >> the eight and a half years as commander in chief have to be the center of it. but i really tried to do the whole life. sometimes you read the life of washington and it's all the revolutionary war. and i wanted to give a full attention to both terms as president and the period that's fascinating between the revolutionary war and the time he becomes president. there's no dull period in his life. >> why 83 pages to the statesman? >> i guess because it was relatively brief. again, you have to pity me here, brian. i have five and a half years of the french and indian war to cover, eight and a half years of the revolutionary war, four months of the constitutional convention and then eight years of the two-term presidency. so i'm kind of very aware that i have to do justice to those big chunks of the story. and you really can't stint when

it comes to those because those are the monumental achievements of his life. so i may have written the others somewhat more suck sinchingtsly. >> the presidency is 205 pages, the most -- and we'll continue this discussion. but the most interesting thing you learned about his presidency. >> sometimes it's portrayed that george washington somehow floated above the fray, that he was a figurehood and hamilton was running it. not at all. washington was absolutely on top of everything that was going on. even jefferson mar veled at the way that not only everyone was reporting to washington but washington wanted to review all outgoing letters and everyson mar veled at the way that washington was a way that everything was happening in the administration. so he was a much stronger president than i think people realized. and very creative.

remember, he is forging the office of the presidency, he establishes a benchmark in terms of appointing people of brilliance and integrity. he is really the one who is defining the system of separation of powers and checks and balances. and then most importantly we're still living with george washington presidency. and what i mean by that is that washington, unlike the framers of the constitution, washington decides that the eeng gin of foreign and domestic policy is going to be the presidency, it's not going to be the congress. >> chair, the author of the new book, washington, a life. we'll pick up where we left off in our next hour. thank you.

>> the supreme court has started its new term, and you can learn more about the nation's highest court with c-span's latest book, the supreme court. candid conversations with sitting and retired justices, revealing unique insights about the court. available in hard cover wherever you buy books and also as an e book. >> hey, middle and high school students. enter c-span's student cam documentary. make a video on this year's theme, washington, d.c. through my lens. tell us about an issue, event or topic that helped you better

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