You Never Forget Your First
It turns out, April was my month for reading biography, though not by design. Nonetheless, fictional and historical biography dominated my reading last month. In addition to Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (the fictional biography of Michelangelo), I picked up Alexis Coe's new biography of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First (2020). While I am not generally one to seek out a founding father biography, I thoroughly enjoyed Coe’s. She begins by establishing herself as quite different from typical Washington biographers (particularly because of her gender). Coe identifies and examines the many narratives that have built up around the life of George Washington since his time, and presents a very human rendering of the man who helped cement the American democratic system.
Coe’s biography opens with a series of lists including the many diseases Washington survived throughout his relatively long life (for 18th-century standards), his friends and enemies during the Revolutionary years and throughout his presidency (noting the fact that many friends became enemies), and all the animals Washington raised at Mt. Vernon. These lists, accompanied by simple graphics, set the tone for Coe’s refreshing and entirely readable biography. They are at once informative and easy to follow.
Following the lists that give the reader a glimpse of Washington and his life, You Never Forget Your First examines the long tradition of Washington biographers with their standard take on his personal, political and military lives that shifted throughout the course of the last two hundred years (plus). I was particularly entertained by Coe’s description of “The Thigh Men of Dad History” (the title of her Introduction) as she seeks to reframe some of the Washington biographical narrative and ensure that we aren’t misremembering our nation’s first great leader. Coe points out that many of Washington’s biographers—the “thigh men”—obsess upon Washington’s striking, muscular figure as they seek to define him as the pinnacle of masculinity. In addition to scrutinizing the tradition of Washington biographies, Coe goes on to set the story straight (basing her claims on what is and isn’t in extent historical records) about things like Washington’s relationship with his mother, his early military career, his lack of biological children, and his relationship with Mt. Vernon’s many enslaved people.
I found the social history within Washington’s biography compelling and appreciated that Coe spent the time on Mary Washington’s person, as well as that of Martha Custis Washington. She spends time introducing the reader to young George Washington and his role in inadvertently starting the French and Indian War (more generally known as the Seven Years War). I also appreciated the ways in which Coe tracks the relationships between various founding fathers and Washington as they shifted from Revolutionary unity to divisive federalist vs. republican politics in the early years of the nationhood. Characters like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton all play a significant role in Washington’s biography (particularly the final dozen years of his life or so). Reading Coe’s biography of his presidential years felt akin to tragedy as Washington finds himself far from his beloved Mt. Vernon, in the midst of rising political parties and an increasingly vicious war of words published in various newspapers around the country. To compound the infighting of the young nation’s leaders came the challenges of the French Revolution (another hotly contested subject among politicians of the day). All of this was much to Washington’s distaste (he was after all more a man of action than of rhetoric), and yet he was compelled by many of the young nation’s great men to continue serving as president for a second term. Coe’s biography certainly highlights Washington’s accomplishments as well as his shortcomings in military and political leadership; the reader is left contemplating George Washington the man, not the icon or the conquering hero, simply the man of both excellence and limitation.
Coe concludes her Washington biography by examining his role as a slave master. Like most of his contemporary peers Washington enslaved a substantial number of men and women at Mt. Vernon. Coe highlights several of these enslaved persons during the Washington’s lifetime. She spends time on Ona Judge (of Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s 2017 Never Caught: the Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge) as well as William Lee, who was Washington’s manservant and the only enslaved person to receive freedom immediately upon Washington’s death. Biographers and historians have often applauded Washington for including affranchisement in his will, yet Coe clarifies that with the exception of Lee, all Washington’s enslaved persons were to remain in bondage until the death of his wife. What’s more, eighteenth-century legal ownership was complicated in marriages, particularly ones like the Washington’s in which widowed Martha brought an entire dower estate to their joint household. Among the Washington estate there were individuals known as dower slaves who came to the marriage with Martha Custis Washington’s estate; these enslaved persons (and any children of female dower slaves) were not Washington’s to liberate; they were his wife’s property to be passed down to her children and grandchildren from her first marriage. Coe’s biography scrutinizes the praise Washington has previously received for the manumission included in his will by looking at what other contemporaries did in their lifetimes with regard to enslaved people in their estates (there were wealthy Virginians at the time who liberated their enslaved people during their lifetimes).
What’s more, Coe acknowledges that certain friends of Washington (the Marquis de Lafayette, for example) encouraged him to do so, but that Washington clung to the paternalistic notion that his enslaved persons were better off at his estate. She closes the conversation about the enslaved people of Mt. Vernon by stressing the heart-wrenching divisions of families as dower slaves remained enslaved (and inherited to different descendants) following Martha’s death, while Washington’s slaves were freed; indeed, the process tore several families part. I found Coe’s treatment of Washington and the slavery problem rooted in history and by no means anachronistic. This is certainly a troubling element of Washington’s biography and one that underscores that Washington was by no means devoid of failure, even though he no doubt did a great many things for our nation. Washington’s inability to set aside the financial gains enslaving others provided he and his is, sadly, one part of his story and one that deserves to be remembered accurately.
You Never Forget Your First was a fast read and an enjoyable refresher of eighteenth-century American history. Coe humanizes Washington, acknowledging the ways in which he positioned himself to become a prominent citizen, a revolutionary, and a leader among men while recognizing the avenues in which his greatness fell short. I found this approach moving as well as educational. So often we tend to overly demonize or overly celebrate the life of historically significant men and women, and I appreciated what felt like a well-rounded biography in You Never Forget Your First.
