Description

By Edward J. Larson. ISBN 978-0-8139-3898-1. Copyright 2016. Hardcover with 139 pages including notes and index. Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward J. Larson reveals the fascinating backstory of George Washington's leadership in the political, legal, and economic consolidation of the new nation, spotlighting his crucial role in forming a more perfect union. In the critical years following the American Revolution the newly independent states teetered toward disunion under the Articles of Confederation. Washington's most pivotal acts; conferring with like-minded nationalists, establishing navigational rights on the Potomac, and quelling the near uprising of unpaid revolutionary troops against the Confederation Congress, show his central role in the drive for reform leading up to the Constitutional Convention. His leadership at that historic convention, his mostly behind-the-scenes efforts in the ratification process and the first federal election, and his inauguration as president, complete the picture of Washington as the nation's first citizen. A Mount Vernon bookplate, signed by the author, is included with your purchase.

George Washington lived in an age of revolutions, during which he faced political upheaval, war, economic change, and social shifts. These revolutions affected American women in profound ways, and the women Washington knew—personally, professionally, and politically—lived lives that reveal these multifaceted transformations. Although Washington often operated in male-dominated arenas, he participated in complex and meaningful relationships with women from across society.

A lively and accessibly written volume, Women in George Washington’s World highlights some of the women—Black and white, free and enslaved—whom Washington knew. Women who admired and memorialized him, women who provided him love and solace, women who frustrated him, and women who worked for or against him—all of these women are chronicled through their own experiences and identities.

The essays, written by established and emerging historians of gender, reveal the lives of a diverse group of women, including plantation mistresses and enslaved workers, Loyalists and Patriots, poets and socialites, as well as mothers, wives, and sisters. Collectively, women emerge as strong actors during the American Revolution and its aftermath, not merely passive spectators or occasional participants. Although usually not on battlefields or in government offices, women made choices and acted in ways that affected their own, their families’, and sometimes even the nation’s future.