“This book reveals [Washington] as a man of emotion, raw emotion.”
In anticipation of our conversation next week with Peter Stark, the author of Young Washington, we speak with Jefferson about our first president. Jefferson also comments on the time change, and the importance of using available daylight.
Further Reading
What Would Jefferson Do?
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The moment that he had won a stunning victory for Rome, he broke his sword, and returned to his modest farm.”
Tune in to your local public radio or join the 1776 Club to hear this episode of What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?
Clay Jenkinson and Lindsay Chervinsky discuss ten things about an event rather than an individual: the crossing of the Delaware River by George Washington and the Continental Army in a surprise attack on Christmas night, 1776.
We're joined by author Joseph Ellis to discuss his work chronicling the Founding Fathers. This week, we're focusing on his 2004 biography, His Excellency: George Washington. The historian Gordon Wood reviewed the book writing that “Ellis's portrait of Washington thus humanizes the man without knocking him off the pedestal where his contemporaries placed him. This Washington is all the greater because he is a real human being with both passions and principles.”
Jefferson tells us that Article Three of the Constitution contemplates a court system, but that it is quite vague and general, so the first Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789 which was intended to create the infrastructure of the Judicial system. George Washington then filled every available seat through appointment.
This week author and White House historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky discusses her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. The US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet—the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. The book explores why George Washington created one.
Author Jon Meacham calls the book an “important and illuminating study,” one that “has given us an original angle of vision on the foundations and development of something we all take for granted: the president’s Cabinet.”