Resurrecting Dead White Males

Joseph J. Ellis. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. xiv + 320 pp. Notes and index. $26.95 (cloth); $15.00 (paper).

In the last several decades, two countervailing tendencies have become manifest in historical scholarship. The first, perhaps best described by Jill Lepore and Richard D. Brown as microhistory, concentrates on increasingly narrow topics.¹ Practitioners of this approach spurn studies of elite white males in favor of more marginalized subjects—women, slaves, poor working-class individuals and groups (both female and male), Native Americans, and a wide range of obscure figures of various ethnic backgrounds and occupations. Even when they focus on particular individuals, these historians have "nonbiographical goals in mind . . . they are keen to evoke a period, a mentalite, a problem: the origins of religious beliefs, the power of popular culture, the clash of Western and non-Western people." In their minds, "the life story . . . is merely the means to an end—and that end is always explaining the culture."² Illustrious examples of this approach include Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (1990), Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (1998), and Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown, The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America (2003).

While a great many historians, concentrating their efforts on microhistory or the closely related fields of social and cultural history, have published stunningly insightful books dealing with the early republic in recent years, their work pales in comparison to the popularity of authors providing studies of the Founding Fathers. These "dead white males," shunned by microhistorians have undergone a remarkable resurrection. During the last few years the reading public has made David McCullough's John Adams (2001) a runaway bestseller. In this same period Richard Brookhiser's Alexander Hamilton, American (1999), Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton (2004), Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Joseph Ellis's American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996) have all enjoyed widespread popular success. Others garnering considerable public attention include Gordon Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004), and Joseph Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1993), and Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation (2000). In addition, a growing number of studies devoted to George Washington have begun to appear. These include Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (1996), James MacGregor Burns, George Washington (2004), David H. Fischer, Washington's Crossing (2004), and Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (2003).

Now Joseph Ellis weighs in with his own study of Washington—"the deadest, whitest male in American history" (p. xi). Fully aware of the prodigious accomplishments of Douglas Southall Freeman's seven-volume George Washington: A Biography (1948–1957) and James Thomas Flexner's four-volume George Washington (1965–1972), Ellis claims that "we do not need another epic painting, but rather a fresh portrait focused tightly on Washington's character" (p. xiii). This is what he has written. His acknowledged model is Marcus Cunliffe's George Washington, Man and Monument (1958). There is, however, a much more recent work that approaches Benjamin Franklin in much the same way that Ellis treats George Washington. Edmund Morgan's Benjamin Franklin (2002) is a wonderfully tight character study of Franklin quite dissimilar to Walter Isaacson's larger tome. While certainly cognizant of the wisdom of Franklin—as well as the varied talents of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and James Madison—Ellis maintains that even within such a pantheon of greats, Washington remained "primus inter pares, the Foundingest Father of them all" (p. xiv). In Ellis's mind the explanation for this ascendancy "lies buried within the folds of the most ambitious, determined, and potent personality of an age not lacking for worthy rivals" (p. xiv...