The Indispensable President

The Declaration of Independence, signed and issued to the public 250 years ago this month, was the banner under which the American Revolution was fought. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The Declaration, "the sheet anchor of American republicanism," as Lincoln called it, stated the ideals behind the revolution, but played little role either in starting or ending the conflict. The battles of Lexington and Concord, which ignited the war, had been fought more than a year earlier, in April 1775; the war would continue for another five years until it was settled in 1781 by the American victory at Yorktown. Without victory in the war for independence, the Declaration of Independence might have been relegated to a footnote in history.

In American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington, H.W. Brands provides a highly readable single-volume biography of the architect of that victory, and the indispensable Founding Father of the American republic. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas and author of previously published biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, relies upon letters, diaries, speeches, and other original documents, to draw a fresh portrait of Washington that shows him to be less distant and elusive, and more human in both his virtues and vices, than he has been rendered in other biographies and popular histories.

Washington's aristocratic bearing along with his commanding presence were important ingredients in his success but, as this biography shows, Washington earned his lofty reputation by persevering through setbacks, defeats, and disappointments, all of which prepared the way for subsequent victories. Washington's life was one of action and experience: He participated in nearly every important event that roiled the American colonies and the new nation during the latter half of the 1700s. Brands succeeds admirably in compressing these events, and Washington's role in them, into a single volume that is at once accessible to most readers while remaining faithful to the rapidly unfolding history of the era.