The Ascent of George WashingtonBy JOHN FERLING

Reviewed by Max Byrd

How the man made himself into a living monument.

 Those core qualities of avarice and anger may have been obscured for his contemporaries by his unsmiling exterior, but they still drove and tormented him, almost to the end. 

Somewhere around the age of 30, George Washington turned himself to stone.

Not all at once, and not completely. But so much so that by the time he rode into Philadelphia in 1775 for the Second Continental Congress, at the age of 43, his reputation was permanently fixed: a man of grave, stately bearing, with a "Soldier-like Air," as a fellow delegate observed, "and a...hard countenance." "As awful as a god," added Abigail Adams. "A heart not warm in its affections," said Thomas Jefferson carefully.

Jefferson was understating the matter badly. So aloof, chilly, and marmoreal was Washington, even in private, that his very presence could strike a gathering mute: "His own near relatives," recalled his step-granddaughter, "feared to laugh or speak before him." Once, during the Constitutional Convention, the witty and bold Gouverneur Morris bet Alexander Hamilton a dinner that he could break through great Washington's reserve. On the appointed evening Morris walked up to him, placed his left hand casually on Washington's shoulder, and said, "My dear General, I am happy to see you look so well." Washington removed the hand from his shoulder, took one step back and, without a word, stared icily at Morris until the younger man slunk back into the crowd. "He had the gift of silence," said John Adams rather wistfully.