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The Political Philosophy of George Washington * Jeffry H. Morrison * Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2009 * xxiv, 227 pp. * $40.00
Reviewed by Peter R Henriques, emeritus professor of history at George Mason University. He is the author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (2006).
After an introductory chapter tracing George Washington's political life, Jeffry H. Morrison devotes the final three sections of his book to the three main pillars of Washington's political philosophy: classical republicanism, British liberalism, and Protestant Christianity. Morrison is in agreement with the growing trend among contemporary historians arguing for the centrality of Washington's role in the founding of the nation and that he was a much more thoughtful and informed leader than had been previously thought. He makes the case that, although not a systematic thinker, Washington had a political philosophy that, with the exception of his views on slavery, was surprisingly consistent throughout his mature life.
The book contains a number of valuable quotations and some pithy insights: Washington's "interest in his own reputation . . . bordered on self-absorption" (p. 8); his "mind, like the proverbial mill of the gods, may have ground slowly, it ground exceedingly fine" (p. 12); he was "a political thespian of no mean ability"...