George Washington was a giant of a man in the same mold as Churchill, Nelson, Captain Cook and Ben Franklin. His stature is enhanced as you discover more about his leadership and vision, history can not diminish him, even when revealing his foibles and defeats. He remains the greatest American. Earlier reading, and my visiting and sensing the pities of Valley Forge added to my respect and admiration of this giant of a man. Despite an English birth I believe had my time been his, I would surely have joined his principled and Glorious Revolution and shared the Congressional neglect and politically induced starvation of his Continental Army while fighting for principles of Liberty, as did so many British settlers.

In 1784, thinking that the fates had finished with him Washington ‘retired’ to his beloved Mount Vernon to settle down to farm under his ‘vines and figs’ and to turn this plantation, with its stunning views of the Potomac into his home. When you visit Mount Vernon and drift through the relatively tiny and cozy rooms and settle on a rocker on the magnificent portico and gaze at the river view – as he must have often done- you realize he achieved even this modest ambition greatly.

But the fates were already calling him back and his intellectual searching, so far ahead of so many others, were already stirring his concern that the newly forged nation was in danger of rending apart into two. So this action-orientated giant ‘got back in the saddle’ and undertook a journey to determine if his river – the Potomac – could seal the new Union and provide an outlet to the West for the restless States – his Grand Idea – and, of course, his journey led back to his continuing his interrupted service to this Great Nation.

Joel Achenbach has produced a very readable account of the start of this great man’s return to service.

Achenbach’s tale of Washington surveying his land in 1784 is interesting in its own right, but unfortunately there is only so much nature writing that can hold one’s interest. The author himself even states that Washington’s diary of the trip was very straightforward and unflourished. The fun history comes after Washington is gone—he continues on with the history of the Potomac River through the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Enthusiasts of local and regional history will find this volume useful. ( )

A Refreshing Look at George Washington

It is 1784. The war was won. He had retired to pursue farming his “fig tree and vine” life along the banks of the Potomac River.

Yet George Washington’s mind could not remain fallow. Watching the lazy tidal waters of the Potomac lap shores of his Mount Vernon plantation, he developed what author Joel Achenbach calls his Potomac Scheme. The retired warrior planned a trip up the Potomac, over the Appalachians and into the frontier. The excuse was to collect back rents on his properties. The objective, however, was to lay the ground work for a plan that would transform the Potomac into a major commercial artery that would link the 13 newly established states with the unsettled West.

There was a method to Washington scheme. Achenbach, who describes himself as an explanatory journalist as opposed to an historian, details Washington’s concern that the newly established country would fracture into separate nations. The Potomac, Washington envisioned, could effectively bind the two regions.

The book paints an insightful portrait of Washington. Set between periods of public service, the reader sees a relaxed man, predisposed towards action. A man who loves the outdoors; a man with an unquenchable entrepreneurial drive; a man who believes the country’s destiny lays to the west.

Achenbach took three years to research and write this largely uncovered period of Washington’s life. He spices his account with descriptions of the land's geography, politics, farmers and backwoodsmen, Indians and slaves.

Thanks to Achenbach well-written “explanatory journalism,” Washington emerges as an engaging visionary not the stiff, aloof figure portrayed in history books. ( )