Sons of the Father: George Washington and His Protégés edited by Robert M. S. McDonald (review)

Ten of the twelve chapters in Sons of the Fathers address Washington’s relationship with individuals: Daniel Morgan, Anthony Wayne, Henry Knox, Nathaniel Greene, Marquis de Lafayette, and Robert Kirkwood in the military; Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris in politics; and Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe in both realms. Many of the contributors to this collection, which honors the memory of Don Higginbotham, benefited from Higginbotham’s mentoring in ways that parallel the mentoring that Washington gave the figures highlighted in the book. Collectively, the biographical pieces demonstrate Washington’s genius for identifying and managing talent. Two chapters covering more general themes frame the chapters focusing on Washington’s relationships with individuals.

In discussing Washington’s mentors, Fred Anderson highlights the centrality of the patron–client relationship in eighteenth-century America. Jack Greene concludes by asking how we should account for the extraordinary quality of the men who managed the Revolution. He approaches the problem obliquely by stressing Britain’s penchant for underestimating American capabilities. The leaders of a society that had developed demographically, economically, and politically to the extent that British North America had after 1690 were entitled to more respect from the British than they received. Greene assumes that presiding over a rapidly developing society qualified those in charge to orchestrate a successful revolution. But rapid development could just as well have bred factional chaos. Although Sons of the Father underscores Washington’s ability to manage wildly different personalities, it is less successful in exploring why he was so successful in that role.

Anderson reminds us that Washington’s managerial skills were acquired rather than innate. One of his more impressive acquisitions was learning to navigate the paradoxical relationship between space and power in North America, as noted in Mark Thompson’s chapter on Knox and John W. Hall’s on Nathaniel Greene. In Europe, concentrating power was usually the key to dominating space; in America, the scattering of the population over immense expanses made this strategy far less viable. Hence, the Continental Army was no more capable of subduing American society than the British Army was. Instead, the dispersal of settlement bred a de-centered political culture, dependent upon gentry cooperation, in which problems had to be solved consensually and the renunciation of power could on occasion be an effective way of garnering it.

The absence of strategic centers, however, was a double-edged sword. Though it was a tremendous asset in defeating an enemy, Washington also needed to find ways of concentrating power if he was to persuade Britain to abandon the war, as it did after Yorktown and—almost a decade later—if the nation was to establish its credit, as it managed to do through Hamilton’s funding scheme. Washington could not have achieved these feats by himself. Instead, he relied on the energy and creativity of many contemporaries. But as this volume shows, he both understood the direction in which events needed to move and developed a canny knack for empowering the right men to get essential jobs done at critical moments.