655. His Excellency by Joseph Ellis- summary

655.  His Excellency by Joseph Ellis. There are two major approaches to people of unique capacity.  Great people, whether Scipio Africanus or Cicero or George Washington, so utterly surpass the capacity of even talented people and appear to have done the impossible to ordinary people are often elevated to a divine or semi-divine status.  This obscures the true greatness of these people for they, just like any one, had to deal with personal demons, ambitions and weaknesses inherent to any human.  Or the other approach is that of some modern historians-  judge a great person from a self-righteous superior sense of morality and behold greatness as nothing but a charade, a farce.  Ellis has done something clever.  He exposes the warts and faults only to show that George Washington managed to subsume his demons and ambitions for the general good.  His courage in battle was impressive.  He was fearless.  He had a temper which exploded on occasion.  He held strong views about a strong central government, yet always worked within the confines of what the times would allow.  He reluctantly accepted command of the continental army.  He graciously relinquished command at the end of the war.  He went into retirement just like Cincinnatus of the Roman Republic.  When the Articles of Confederation proved their own inadequacy to administer the needs of a new country he was convinced to come out of retirement and chair the Constitutional Convention.  When finished again he went home and was again coaxed out of retirement to become its first president and with deep reluctance accepted a second term.  During the revolution he wrestled with the country's and his own slavery dilemma and contradiction.  Until President Truman integrated the army he was the only commander in our history who had former slaves fighting along side whites.  This experience gave him first hand knowledge that blacks had the same ability as whites.  But he was not willing to tackle the slave problem if it meant the impossibility of forming a nation.  So he was willing to live with the contradiction for a higher cause.  In his will he freed his slaves.  He was ambitious.  He was driven.  He wanted a lasting reputation of service and commitment.  His end was/is moving and inspiring- he developed a painful and deadly infection in his epiglottis (which he acquired because he insisted on his customary inspection via horse in a driving rain) endured painful medical treatment until he told his doctors that enough was enough- felt his own pulse and said "'tis well".