• George Washington, Chief Executive Officer
• Tom Cutterham (bio)

When George Washington was eleven, his father's death left most of the family's property—including sixty-four enslaved people—divided among his two older half-brothers. He was destined to no more than a very minor place in the colonial Virginia gentry. Moving "with seeming ease between the sometimes desperate conditions" of his mother's home at Ferry Farm, and the "genteel abundance" of his half-brother's Mount Vernon estate, he supplemented his minimal schoolroom education by practicing penmanship and the art of polite sociability. As Alexis Coe puts it in her accessible and sprightly new biography, "Washington understood his role" (7). His access to the world of elite wealth and power was conditional. He was the eager, needy relative in search of opportunities to serve his betters—and the colonizing mission to which they were dedicated. At seventeen, with a leg up from his connections, he became a licensed surveyor and [End Page 233] began amassing property in the Shenandoah Valley. It was the start of half a century of acquisition and expansion that made Washington one of the wealthiest, most powerful men on the continent.

You Never Forget Your First raises the question of what it means to take George Washington seriously. Its titular innuendo is paired with a cover illustration that puts a cheeky smile on the first president's face—even if, like most eighteenth-century sitters, his lips remain tightly sealed, keeping his problematic teeth obscured. In the introduction, Coe situates herself as a puckish outsider intent on disrupting the "Dad History" genre. But Washington himself is not the butt of the joke. Coe's argument is that the reverence and worn-out conventions that characterize previous biographies serve to obscure their subject from posterity's careful consideration. Her book, including its unorthodox packaging, is crafted to jolt readers to renewed attention. Coe is also blunt about Washington's life as an enslaver, the "forced-labor camps" we tend to call plantations (43), and his active participation in indigenous "genocide" (75). The idea is not to make light of the man but to treat him as a historical problem, something worthy of investigation.

Washington's uncanny ability to understand his role continued to be central to his success, long after his half-brother Lawrence's death elevated George to a more stable footing in Virginia's plantocracy. It is true that his blundering failure to conduct armed diplomacy among the French imperialists and Native nations in Ohio country helped trigger a global war that would reshape the British empire and set the stage for revolution. But he was a junior officer in his early twenties, keen to cut a figure as a man of action. Prepared by an upbringing among white Virginians who coveted possession of both Black bodies and Native territory, Washington saw no legitimate limit to the colony's western claims, nor any need to compromise with those who saw things differently. It was that spirit that soon brought him, along with many of his fellow colonists, into conflict with the metropole itself. His role—one he never wavered from—was to give firm and manly leadership to this vision of continental, imperial entitlement.

For Coe, what drove Washington was not so much his settler-colonial mindset as the "arsenal of personal grievances" he had stockpiled through years of social climbing. "At his core," she writes, "he was still a man eager to be recognized" (53). On this account, war against Britain gave him a [End Page 234] stage on which to prove himself—including, perhaps, to Sally Fairfax, the impeccably genteel object of his youthful affections. Presentation, appearance, and the dynamics of relative status were always likely to be matters of concern to someone who grew up seeking the charity of...

• 首席执行官乔治华盛顿
• 汤姆·卡特勒姆（传记）

乔治·华盛顿（George Washington）十一岁时，他父亲的去世使该家庭的大部分财产（包括64位被奴役的人）分配给了他的两个年长的同父异母兄弟。他注定要去的只是殖民地弗吉尼亚士绅中一个很小的地方。他在渡轮农场的母亲家中有时处于绝望的境地和同父异母的兄弟弗农山上的“绅士丰富”之间“看起来似乎很轻松”，他通过练习笔法和礼貌的交际艺术来补充他的最小限度的教室教育。正如亚历克西斯·科伊（Alexis Coe）在她易读的全新传记中所说的那样，“华盛顿理解他的角色”（7）。他进入精英财富和权力世界的条件是有条件的。他很渴望 有需要的亲戚寻找服务于他的更好的机会的机会，以及他们致力于的殖民使命。十七岁那年，他的联系开始了，他成为了执照的测量师，并且[第233页结束]开始在雪兰多厄山谷积聚财产。这是半个世纪的收购和扩张的开始，使华盛顿成为非洲大陆上最富有，最有权势的人之一。

你永远不会忘记自己的第一个提出了一个问题，即认真对待乔治·华盛顿意味着什么。它的名义上的影射力与封面插图搭配，使第一任总统的脸上露出厚颜无耻的笑容-即使像大多数18世纪的保姆一样，他的嘴唇仍然紧紧地密封着，使他有问题的牙齿被遮盖了。在介绍中，Coe将自己定位为顽固的局外人，意图破坏“爸爸历史”类型。但是华盛顿本人并不是这个笑话的源头。Coe的论点是，代表以前传记的尊敬和陈旧的惯例会使后代的审慎考虑掩盖了他们的主题。她的书，包括其非传统的包装，旨在吸引读者重新引起注意。Coe对华盛顿作为奴役者的生活（“强迫劳动营地”）也直言不讳 我们倾向于称人工林（43），而他积极参与了本土的“种族灭绝”（75）。这个想法不是要轻视这个人，而是要把他当作一个历史问题，这值得研究。

在同父异母的弟弟劳伦斯去世使乔治在弗吉尼亚州的植物大统治中站稳脚跟之前，华盛顿的不可思议的理解能力仍然是他成功的关键。的确，他在法国帝国主义和俄亥俄国家的原住民国家之间进行武装外交的失误，确实引发了一场全球战争，这场战争将重塑大英帝国并为革命奠定基础。但是他在20年代初担任初级官员，热衷于削减身为行动人物的身材。华盛顿渴望通过拥有黑人尸体和原住民领土的白人弗吉尼亚人的抚养而准备，华盛顿认为该殖民地的西方主张没有合法的限制，也没有必要与那些持不同看法的人妥协。正是这种精神很快带给他，与他的许多殖民者同住，与大都会本身发生了冲突。他的角色-他从未动摇过的角色-是要坚定和男子气概化地领导这种对大陆，帝国权利的构想。

对于科伊来说，推动华盛顿前进的不只是他的定居者殖民主义思维方式，还在于他通过多年的社会攀爬积累的“个人不满情绪”。她写道：“在他的核心，他仍然是一个渴望被认可的人”（53）。因此，对英国的战争使他进入了一个[End Page 234]舞台，以证明自己的身份–也许向萨利·费尔法克斯（Sally Fairfax）证明了自己年轻的感情的无可挑剔的绅士风度。呈现，外表和相对地位的变化总是很可能成为那些寻求慈善事业的人关注的问题。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。