General Washington's Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming, 1783 by Stanley Weintraub

General Washington's Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming, 1783 Reviews

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  Joy

  This book has sat on our bookshelf for years & this year, I determined to finally read it. Parts were boring which is how life is and then all of a sudden, a gem would crop up and the content enlightened me about George Washington or one of his contemporaries.
  
  I delighted in the story of Washington’s face covered in plaster & Mrs. Washington walks in after being away visiting, sees George in this state. (Do you think she thought it was a death mask on her beloved?) She must have shockingly cried out, George starts to smile (making his mouth twist) thus making an interesting smirk on his face which was used to fashion a bust of him. See page 125.
  
  I learned that a hair style called Dress a’ l’Independance was popular after the Revolutionary War. This style meant that a woman would wear 13 curls at the neck. See page 157.
  
  I cried with admiration as I read the final farewell speech where George acknowledges that heaven and deity supported, protected and blessed him as he worked to get our countries freedom from Britain. All of congress cried after his farewell. Has a leader ever been this loved since?
  
  Page 173 has a beautifully written part about his posterity, Thompson writes to Washington & states the following: “I heartily wish, that this sacred deposit (talking about his commission paper that he turned into Congress) may be preserved by your children and children’s children to the latest posterity and may prove an incentive to them to emulate the virtues of their worthy and great progenitor.”
  (He never even had his own biological children but loved his step children as if they were his own children.)
  
  I now have a huge admiration for George Washington! President Washington, if you can hear me, I would like to thank you for all you did for our country! We need more leaders like you.
• 
  Susan

  Yikes, so I didn’t finish this. Barely read any of it beyond the preface, or perhaps it was an author’s note. Either way, I enjoyed that. Then I started the book, which is skinny, and almost immediately began to struggle. This was right after I’d finished rating Founding Brothers, a book of essays about the same period of time in American history. I’d listened to that book after listening to Chernow’s bio of Hamilton. I read others’ reviews of Founding Brothers and was interested in the discrepancies. People either loved it for the subject matter or hated it for the writing, which they found unnecessarily complex or something similar I’m not remembering, and which I hadn’t noticed listening to the book. So I came back to this book and re-read everything I’d read the night before, only this time I read it out loud. And it did improve my comprehension. I debated reading the entire book out loud to myself, but decided first to pick up Chernow’s bio of Washington. At 800 plus pages, I was interested but also a bit anxious about reading it. Yet the first few pages and then the first chapter simply slipped by easily. It was readable. And I discovered an easy to read 800 page book is infinitely preferable (to me) than a difficult to read short book. So this one went back to the library. I will finish Chernow’s Washington one of these days!
• 
  Greg Kopstein

  General George Washington was an American incarnation of Cincinnatus, giving up his almost unlimited power to retire gracefully beneath his “own vine and fig tree.” It’s a seldom covered story, as some accounts of the Revolutionary War do not delve past 1776 and many stop at Yorktown. A rare collection cover the end of the war and the signing of the treaty. This is one of the rarest since it covers - in significant detail - the slog of Washington’s farewell in New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, and return to Mt. Vernon.
  
  This book was short so I figured it would be a breeze. I’m a social studies teacher, I know this war and this man, and I’ve read enough texts to be knowledgeable on the topic. This was an unknown account for me and I had never considered his retirement with any significant attention. This book was a 2 month slog, almost reflecting Washington’s trek home.
  
  It was very detailed, well researched, very well written. But a slog nonetheless, and this is why I gave it 3-stars.
• 
  Rob

  An interesting little book. Weintraub describes the time of September to December 1863 when Washington makes his sojourn from West Point, New York to his home in Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve. The book highlights the difficulties in travel and communication at his point in history. He describes the yielding of New York (never captured by the Americans) by the British. He also underlines the significance of Washington's conviction of returning to private life and not furthering ambitions for kingship of the new nation. This significance was not lost on just contemporaries as Weintraub documents frequently.
  
  All in all, this is a good Christmas book for armchair historians.
• 
  Marianne Evans

  This small book was filled with all kinds of little treasures. One revealed secret was actually a footnote on page 132. I live in Philadelphia, and I believe this city has completely forgotten Charles Willson Peale. I do so love reading about this lost character. In this footnote, Peale had described an event to unveil his new painting of Washington. An exciting evening was planned and destroyed with the misfiring of a rocket stick, destroying the painting, killing some and hurting Peale. WOW! No one ever told me that before.
• 
  Lawrence

  Well researched and fascinating look at the great General’s journey home, the war won and the peace secure to a life outside of public service for the man who many wished to crown King / Dictator. Enjoyable.
• 
  Matthew

  A detailed and moving account of Gen. Washington's farewell to the Army, the Country, and his entrance into the life of a private citizen. Beautiful. 4/5 stars.
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  Kevin Keating

  This book wasn't very long but it actually could have been shorter still. It kept my interest about halfway through and kinda got tedious towards the end. I would have liked more info about his actual homecoming to Mt Vernon but it skipped that. So overall it was sorta interesting - thus 3 stars.
• 
  Smokey

  This book portrays itself as a look into the human side of the events surrounding GEN Washington's trip home from a long and difficult war for independence, culminating in a Christmas Eve homecoming at his Mount Vernon plantation. For that reason only, I rate the book lower than five stars. Had it instead claimed to be an in-depth, historical account of Washington and the time, events, and persons surrounding him during his travels homeward in the winter of 1783, I might have expected the steady, pedantic stream of references, facts, and supporting historical anecdotes.
  
  In fairness, there are a few moments where the emotions of that time make their way through the narrative undimmed (the farewell luncheon with his remaining officer corps springs to mind), and those are worth picking through to find. Still, this book is, first and foremost, a well-referenced and methodical presentation of a short but critical time in American history.
  
  Students of the highest ranking military officer in American history would do well to include this work among their sources. So, too, those seeking a glimpse into American society of that time, as the book contains several examples of the social customs, language, religious climate, dress and practices of the nacent nation and its inhabitants.
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  rinabeana

  My dad recommended this book a while ago and he doesn't finish reading anything he doesn't find interesting so I added it to my list. I found it informative and I certainly learned a lot about the Revolution (especially the period between Yorktown and the finalization of the Treaty of Paris, two years about which I knew nothing). That said, the writing was a tad dry. Weintraub tried to intersperse the narrative of Washington's journey with character sketches and anecdotes about wartime occurrences, but the laundry list of the towns Washington passed through and the accolades he received, though punctuated with other material, grew tedious after a while. Perhaps that is the point, since the journey for Washington himself was rather tedious, though he apparently didn't mind being held in such reverence, but I found myself very grateful that the book was relatively short.
• 
  Joe Owen

  A great read of George Washington's farewell to his military life. After the British surrender and signing of the Treaty of Paris, Washington began to travel from New York to his estate of Mount Vernon in Virginia. Along the journey, he gave various farewell addresses and goodbyes to his officers, congress and various communities. This great book highlights this and much more.
• 
  Mart Martin

  If you've read a comprehensive bio of Washington (e.g., Ron Chernow's excellent Washington: A Life) you should find this an interesting companion piece - a good summary of George's journey (literally) from General to private life.
• 
  Dani Gruber

  A little dry - read like a textbook.
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  Mary Lou

  I abandoned this after about 50 pages. I found it to be a tedious travelogue. Without a map, I was lost (so to speak), but realized that even if I'd had been familiar with the route Washington had taken to return to Mt. Vernon, I would still have been apathetic. The detail of Washington's budget keeping was yawn-inducing. Even having read a few books on Washington and the Revolution, I was mentally overwhelmed by Weintraub's cast of characters, often forgetting who it was I was reading about, and why. Skipping ahead to the last chapter, Washington's homecoming seemed anticlimactic. I guess I was expecting Fezziwig but, instead, got an exhausted man reaching home and climbing into bed.