George Washington: His Quest for Honor and Fame

BOOK REVIEW: George Washington: His Quest for Honor and Fame by Peter R. Henriques (Charlottesville, VA: University of VA Press, 2025) $24.95 hardcover

Famed Washington scholar Peter R. Henriques (author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington) turned the content of some recent talks given at Colonial Williamsburg into a brief “interpretive biography” of George Washington. The subtitle implies the focus: “His -Quest for Honor and Fame.” Henriques looks at how Washington was driven to greatness because he wanted to have a life and legacy that would be somehow immortalized through the pursuit of greatness. More than any of the other founders, Washington had hopes that his death would “give birth to honor and glorious memory” (page 2-3).

Each chapter covers a period in Washington’s life and examines the forces that drove him. The first two chapters describe the events of his young life (becoming a surveyor, his overbearing mother, becoming a young envoy to the French, starting the French and Indian War, marrying the wealthy Martha Dandridge Custis), ending with his role in the colonial forces fighting the French in 1759. The third chapter, “From Loyal Virginia Gentleman to Rebel Chieftain 1759-1775,” covers Washington becoming a member of the House of Burgesses, and also finally becoming the master of Mount Vernon, looking to make it profitable, and dreaming of a western paradise beyond the Ohio River Valley. While he was starting to gain a sense of community service, his pragmatic and moderate political views were challenged by rising colonial anger towards Parliament. “An intensely ambitious man, he found his initial undertakings blocked and himself treated as a second-class citizen. Denied official British rank, hampered in his efforts to prosper as a tobacco planter, thwarted in his dreams of a Western empire, George Washington was understandably receptive to an ideology that railed against corruption and tyranny” (p. 44).

As the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, Washington at one point was given almost total dictatorial powers. Ever cognizant of his future legacy, Washington made sure that he operated under civilian rule. By the time the Revolution ended, Washington achieved glory in stepping away from power by resigning his commission. In the fifth chapter, “Returning to the Fray 1783-1789,” Washington was able to use his influence to help guide the Constitutional Convention’s efforts to creating the federal Constitution of 1787. And as much as Washington claimed to want to retire, he understood that his reputation demanded his service as the first president of the new national government.

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The sixth and seventh chapters are devoted to his two terms in office and his brief retirement before his painful death in 1799. It was also painful (probably excruciatingly so) for Washington to see his hard-won reputation torn apart during this second term because of party politics. His vicious temper flared for others to see when he saw a political cartoon showing him on the guillotine. Happy to step down in 1797 to enjoy his remaining years at Mount Vernon, Washington made matters very difficult for President John Adams when Adams asked for his leadership during the Quasi War with France. Washington unexpectedly died from acute epiglottitis in December 1799.

Henriques ends his book with a look at George Washington and slavery. Washington was certainly a product of his time and place, seeing the world as an aristocratic southern landowner. Owning Black enslaved people was a way of life not just accepted, but crucial. Although over time Washington understood that slavery was contrary to the American Revolution’s ideals, he “never viscerally felt slavery’s evil” (p. 128). People who had seen Washington as the majestic and charismatic leader, holding sway over crowds and befriending intelligent women, were shocked to see a completely different personality emerge when His Excellency dealt directly with enslaved people. His inflated sense of patriarchalism turned Washington into a “Javert,” an obsessed pursuer of runaways. Washington’s energies in trying to recapture Ona Judge over the years serves as an example of this. Unlike Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, who did not believe freed Blacks could peacefully co-exist with whites in the nation, Washington appears to have thought otherwise.

One notable omission in Henriques’s book is Washington’s efforts in dealing with indigenous nations. Washington certainly wanted their land for American possession, but maybe he recognized that such an endeavor was not honorable. At least he tried to create a lasting national policy regarding Indians.

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