How George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Turned Land Into America’s Capital

‘The National Road: George Washington and America’s First Highway West‘By Brady J. CrytzerDiversion Books, 368 pages”George Washington and Frederick the Great: Parallel Lives’ By Jürgen Overhoff and Patrick BakerPrinceton University Press , 344 pages‘The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Last Battle Over Power in America’By Jeffrey RosenSimon & Schuster, 448 pagesWhat would George Washington, surveyor, land speculator, and entrepreneur, have made of the “conflict of interest” concept? The earliest use of the phrase, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, occurs in the 1830s. His first foray into the wilderness, sent by a Virginia royal governor to warn the French not to mess with Britain’s claims to western land, was also in the service of a company his brother and the governor had invested in. That would seem to a modern proponent of ethical government, well, unseemly.Yet without Washington’s early frontier experience that predated even the French and Indian War, and his commitment to territorial expansion that snagged even small government advocate Thomas Jefferson into the imperial net with the purchase of the Louisiana land, it is hard to see how the infrastructure — a word apparently coined in the late 19th century — of a continental nation could have been created.Brady J. Crytzer opens his fascinating group biography with Swiss immigrant Albert Gallatin (a future Treasury Secretary) arguing with Washington about the best roadway to the West. Washington asks Gallatin pointed questions that put our first president right up there in the ranks of real estate moguls.In “George Washington and Frederick the Great,” the parallels between a New World president-in-the making and an absolute ruler are apparent — as long as they are not overstated. Jürgen Overhoff and Patrick Baker point out: “As a political agent, as a philosopher, and as a protagonist of the Enlightenment, the Prussian king belonged to a sphere of cultural exchange, a nexus of manifold interconnections between regions and civilizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Intellectually and strategically, Frederick moved in the geopolitical space of a transatlantic community. He was indeed one of the leading figures and key players in what Bernard Bailyn and others have come to describe as ‘Atlantic history.’”Even at the age of twenty-one Washington understood that what happened west of Virginia was going to count in “Atlantic history.” Frederick, a British ally, had pinned down the French in Europe. Washington might well have quaffed a beer from one of those souvenir cups, sold in America, with King Frederick’s visage on it. “George Washington was the proud owner of a book on Frederick the Great’s life,” his biographers report. In 1759, they note, Washington ordered a bust of the Prussian ruler from a London merchant, honoring “the man who had shaped the destinies of Prussia and Europe for nearly half a century,” and the same could be said for an American founder who began his career in the 1750s.During the American Revolution, Washington would find himself in situations that resembled the “earnestly admired” audacious Prussian monarch, “often outnumbered” but victorious over his opponents. As Washington maneuvered around superior British forces, Frederick expressed his admiration for a strategist and brave leader like himself.Frederick the Great fused ambition and action that fairly described George Washington, young and old, even if their political convictions were not aligned. Jefferson would call what Washington began an “empire of liberty” which was also a national project, fueled by much speculation and fighting, populist revolts and the centralizing of power as well as the debates over the meaning of liberty that began, it could be argued, in Washington’s drive to secure land for himself and his new nation.Washington and Jefferson tied their identities to the land. As Jeffrey Rosen emphasizes, Jefferson warmly praised his father, a surveyor and land owner, who left him “the lands on which I was born & live.” Without that landed start, you can almost hear Jefferson say, “Where would I be? Where would the country be?” His pride in the power of land ownership that protected individual liberties came into conflict with Hamilton’s vision of a strong federal government and a powerful executive. However, when Hamilton needed Jefferson’s support to federalize the debts of the states, he knew what to offer: that land that became the national capital.Mr. Rollyson’s “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History” will be published on Presidents’ Day 2027.

How George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Turned Land Into America’s Capital

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