It can be seen as a case study of the relation between democracy and human greatness. One should add that Marshall’s epic is instructive about more than Washington and his political work. It is a historical-political companion to that old bible of American institutions, The Federalist Papers. There is no other concentrated history of the essentials by such an authority on American institutions. We see these from the governing point of view: of the Commander in Chief and founding President without whom, Marshall suggests, neither would have happened. We see the war that freed and partly formed, and then the political deeds that made of tenuous union a self-governing country. The Life is the only comprehensive account by a great statesman of the full founding of the United States-of the founding of an independent people as well as of its government. Washington was father of his country, and Marshall’s Life of Washington is political history as well as biography. While there are differing twentieth-century estimates of the book, the prominent historian Charles Beard had good reason to call Marshall “a historian of masterful acumen.”Īctually, the Life is about much more than Washington. The Life is the only published assessment of Washington’s whole work in war and peace by a wise observer himself active in both.
it is not “written by practical statesmen” who have actually “engaged in the great & interesting events” they write about. Marshall once wrote to Gouverneur Morris (October 2, 1816) on “the inferiority of modern to ancient history”. The Life of Washington is therefore an account of men and events by one who saw much at first hand and saw with a knowing eye.
It is the first serious biography, appearing within eight years of Washington’s death, and its author was himself a statesman of rare judgment who knew the great man and many of his accomplishments. While there are other good biographies of George Washington, some recent, this Life by Chief Justice John Marshall probably should be read first. Robert Faulkner and Paul Carrese (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000). Source: John Marshall's The Life of George Washington.
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