Analysis Of Joseph Ellis His Excellency: George Washington

When it comes to George Washington—the Father of Our Country, the American Fabius, the first president of the United States—there is no shortage of myths surrounding him. There’s the classic myth of him chopping down a cherry tree, and there’s also one of him throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Another about his wooden teeth. There’s also this mythos that he was the greatest man to have ever lived or the most wholly ineffectual and overrated president as of yet. And as the gap between history and the present yawns, with fewer and fewer records available, it becomes more difficult to accurately portray subjects and easier to fall prey to myth. However, Joseph J. Ellis, with his novel His Excellency: George Washington, gives a …show more content…
In particular, when describing Washington’s impact, he posits that the precedents he set were only one part of his whole legacy. This assertion is truthful as there is evidence to prove the former. For example, during his first term Washington was directly responsible for “establishing the cabinet as the chief executive's private, trusted advisors” (mountvernon.org). The fact that the president’s cabinet is secondary in influence to other positions substantiates Ellis’s claim that Washington’s precedents as president were significant but weren’t on the scale of revolutionary. Besides establishing the cabinet, Washington was also responsible for the executive privilege. "When the House of Representatives sought records related to negotiations surrounding the Jay Treaty of 1795, Washington refused to deliver all the documents… set[ting] the precedent for… executive privilege” (Knott, millercenter.org). This furthers Ellis’s claim because the executive privilege is not as clearly associated with Washington as his other exploits like being the first U.S. president. As such, Ellis is correct in his assertion that Washington’s precedents while pertinent weren’t crucial. This is also seen Washington’s policy of neutrality. He set this with “[h]is insistence on neutrality in foreign quarrels… [and] his insistence that the power to make such a determination be lodged in the presidency” during the French Revolution (Knott, millercenter.org). This was a precedent set by Washington as American involvement in any wars so soon after our own revolution would have been detrimental to our country since it was still in a fledgling state at that time. This was a policy dutifully followed by subsequent presidents. However, this policy was only followed for a few decades and has been since exchanged for a policy in which America acts as an international peacekeeper. A definite