George Washington: A Life in Books

Abstract

Like most wealthy gentlemen of his time, George Washington accumulated a private library during the course of his lifetime, leaving at his death a collection of some 1,100 volumes. Kevin J. Hayes's George Washington: A Life in Books is not a description of Washington's library, however (the book does not even include a library list), but a closeup account of Washington's relationship to his books—his acquisition and use of books and their influence upon him.Hayes, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma, is the author of numerous books, several of them on private libraries in the colonial period, including The Library of Benjamin Franklin (American Philosophical Society, 2006); The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford University Press, 2008); and A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf (University of Tennessee Press, 1996). The intensive research into primary sources demonstrated in these works provides him with a deep knowledge of the period and the culture in which Washington lived. Hayes announces as his intention the creation of a biography of Washington as “a man of letters” rather than the “accepted image” of him as “a man of action” (xii). To this end he included in his research both Washington's reading and his writing: his surviving books, including marginalia; library catalogs (of which Washington himself completed two); his published writings, his correspondence, diaries and journals, and hundreds of pages of notes he made on his reading. These materials are scattered among various libraries, and Hayes's conscientious research makes this book a model for other researchers as well as a mine of information about the subject. He describes his work as the first “intellectual biography” of Washington, differentiating it from works focused on Washington's public life, such as the magisterial works of Douglas Southall Freeman and James Thomas Flexner, which focus on Washington as man, general and president.At least one full-length study does cover much of the same ground as as this work; Adrienne M. Harrison's A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington (Potomac Books, 2015). Harrison agrees with Hayes that Washington followed a lifelong program of reading, “purposefully with practical intent” (182) to attain useful knowledge for professional and political goals; she follows that reading through his life, as Hayes does. Harrison places more emphasis on Washington's practical reading habits; she devotes a chapter to his expansion and renovations of the mansion at Mount Vernon, emphasizing the study/library that he created for himself, a plain practical room unlike the imposing rooms in which he received the public. Washington spent the early hours of most days here reading and writing in private.Like Harrison, Hayes creates a picture of a man of considerable self-awareness, especially aware of the shortcomings in his academic education, observing the social and professional environment around him and using books to master that environment. Hayes's book is organized chronologically and managed thematically; Washington seems to have chosen his reading to fit what he was doing—military manuals during the Revolution, political tomes during his presidency, agricultural manuals when he retired to Mount Vernon to live as a gentleman farmer. He carried his military library in a ”green baize box” during the Revolution, and from books he learned a great deal that he was able to put to use on the battlefield, in particular the “petite guerre” tactics of small skirmishes rather than large formal frontal attacks. He became uncomfortable with growing tobacco and read material on growing wheat as a main crop. Very striking is Hayes's account of Washington's reading on the subject of slavery, beginning as early as the 1740s and ending with his final decision, on his deathbed, to put into effect a will freeing his slaves and making arrangements for them after his death. (The book, by the way, includes a very detailed account of the last days of Washington's life.)Though he allows that Washington was not devoted to the reading of novels and poetry, Hayes claims for his hero a high place in American literature, praising his “clean, spare, straightforward military style” (149), especially for the piece usually called the “Farewell Address,” which Washington never delivered orally. Hayes mentions recurrently Washington's encouragement of other writers, consciously supporting, in Hayes's view, the beginnings of an American literature.Hayes's account of how Washington acquired and used his books touches on many layers of colonial life, both commercial (printing, publishing, journalism) and social (education, mentoring; sharing and gifting of books; libraries as markers of social status), This study will be invaluable to students of Washington and his times, and particularly to students of the history of colonial and early American libraries.