Chapter 2 confronts the gender, race, and class composition of state violence in the American Revolution. General Washington attempted to exclude women and non-White men from the military - moves that foreshadowed similar exclusions from military work and political participation in the United States. At the same time, the work, at times violent work, of marginalized individuals in and around American military establishments was essential. The army also needed money - and the interdependence of state finance, state violence, and military discipline was key. Failed finances led to deplorable army condition. Thirty percent of Continental Army soldiers rebelled in January 1781. Washington was infuriated by the protest, but he was even more upset when political leaders negotiated with the men. Disobedient soldiers, he believed, responded best to physical chastisement. Much like recent work that highlights how American nationalism was forged in violent acts against Loyalists, so too this chapter shows how it was forged in military discipline: violent acts against Continental Army soldiers.

British military institutions embraced a hierarchy backed by cruel physical punishment. The defiant soldier could face gauntlets, brandings, wooden horses, floggings, hangings, and firing squads. In certain places in British North America, though, White male colonists in militias and provincial armies enacted a more egalitarian organization - one that tilted authority toward the common soldier and curbed the most egregious aspects of military discipline. Such egalitarianism structured the Massachusetts Army in the American Revolution. But the supposed democratic rebellion would not feature a more democratic fighting force. When George Washington assumed command of the Massachusetts troops (soon known as the Continental Army), he made sure that hostile differences and bodily reprimand shaped the inaugural institutionalization of American state violence. “Every one is made to know his place and keep in it,” said the Reverend William Emerson of Washington’s army, “or be tied up and receive thirty or forty lashes according to his crime.”

This chapter examines the meanings of moderation in the American political tradition, beginning with George Washington’s Farewell Address, continuing with Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and ending with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

Part III covers the years of Washington’s brief final retirement from public life (1797–1799). As is well known, he hoped at last to find relief from the mental strain that had almost constantly accompanied him through many years of consequential, perplexing, and often perilous public service. This hope was not, however, perfectly realized. Even in retirement Washington continued to follow politics closely, forming and expressing opinions on the events of the day, worrying about the dangers of party spirit at home and war abroad. The latter concern drew him one last time into a position of official responsibility: he accepted when President John Adams appointed him commander-in-chief of the provisional army that was planned in the event of open war with France.

The Appendix, “Washington’s Death and Legacy, includes some first-hand accounts of Washington’s last hours, as well as some appreciations of his life, character, and career offered by other Founding-era figures – both American and European – who had known him or followed his career. The Appendix also includes retrospective commentaries on Washington’s significance by Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge.

Part I presents writings from Washington’s first term as president of the United States (1789–1793). Here readers may accompany Washington as he navigates the challenges of holding the supreme executive office of a new government for newly independent nation. We find him considering with care what standards of dignity and decorum are appropriate for the highest office in a republican government. We find him weighing what factors should govern appointments to the subordinate offices at his disposal, as well as judging the proper scope of the powers of the presidency and the government of the Union. Finally, we here encounter Washington exercising diplomacy not only toward other nations, but also toward the various members of his talented but fractious cabinet – and also seeking that cabinet’s advice about whether he should serve a second term.

Part II collects writings from Washington’s second presidential term (1793–1797). During this period Washington had to grapple with delicate problems of foreign policy – especially the question how the young and comparatively weak America should stand in relation to the warring great powers, Britain and France. This challenging term presented domestic perplexities as well, most especially the so-called Whiskey Rebellion, which Washington believed to be a serious threat to the new government’s authority. Moreover, throughout Washington’s entire presidency we find many ceremonial communications in which he strove to educate his fellow citizens in the basic principles of republican government and in the habits and virtues necessary for it to survive and thrive.

Part II presents writings connected to the first part of Washington’s service as the leader of American military forces during the War for Independence. Here the reader encounters Washington’s remarkable combination of diffidence and self-confidence: a diffidence in his abilities accompanied by absolute confidence in his rectitude and dedication to duty. These materials also trace Washington’s efforts to build the army into an effective fighting force while tirelessly impressing upon the minds of the soldiers the nobility of the aims for which they were fighting. They further reveal Washington for the first time in his life dealing with the delicate problems of justice and prudence that attend supreme military command: learning how to deal wisely with the enemy, the citizenry, his military subordinates, and his political superiors.

Part III compiles Washington’s political writings from the alliance with France – a key turning point in the war – to the concluding of peace with Great Britain and Washington’s subsequent retirement from public life. Here we find the ardent patriot coming to the realization that patriotism alone was not enough to carry the war to a successful end. Enthusiasm, he observed, had done what it could in the beginning of the contest, which could now only be won by realistic appeals to the self-interest of those on whose exertions the outcome depended. Here, too, we find Washington confronting the problems that arose from the lack of effective governing power in the Articles of Confederation—experiences that, for the rest of his life, influenced his political thinking and convinced him of the need for a stronger central government.

Part I collects writings from Washington’s young manhood and early middle age, up to the time he became commander-in-chief of the American army. These materials reveal the public-spiritedness that was a constant throughout Washington’s life, but they also illustrate the most important change in its orientation. As a young man, Washington’s ambition sought distinction in the service of the Crown, while in his maturity that ambition was turned toward defending the rights of the rising American nation from the injustices that arose from British imperial rule.

This essay proposes that politics, diplomacy, and a desire for peace were defining markers of Indigenous cultural and literary engagements. European settlers arriving on this continent with an eye toward possessing it wrote off Native peoples as savage and unqualified stakeholders in the “New World” they were forging. The colonial archive, however, almost in spite of itself, turns up repeated instances of Indigenous overtures of peace, presented in traditional frameworks, which can be effectively traced in recognizable patterns from the earliest recorded encounters through to the first major indigenous literary productions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A mindful reading of this archive yields aspects of tradition that inform the outlines of an indigenous literary aesthetic. When indigenous authors such as Samson Occom and William Apess began appearing in print, they carried forward these traditions, confounding settler notions of what it means to be a “politick salvage.”

The Federalists who crafted the United States’ 1788 Constitution planned for a republic free of party or faction. By 1793, however, regional and political divides had become acute. The situation was exploited by renegade French ambassador Edmond-Charles Genêt, who cultivated pro-French fervor and personally named a new club network, the Democratic-Republicans. The clubs became accused by Federalists of cultivating sedition with 1794’s Whiskey Rebellion, but by the 1796 election a powerful coalition developed.

Chapter 4 examines the obstacles enslaved women faced in escaping bondage in post-Revolutionary America. The case of Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved Black woman in Massachusetts who sued for her freedom, captures the tenacity of Black women, who not only resisted with their feet, but also used the courts to gain their freedom. By highlighting the case of Ona Judge, the fugitive slave of George and Martha Washington, this chapter brings to the fore successful escapes in which enslaved women overcame formidable obstacles to freedom. During the post-Revolutionary period, Bett and other enslaved women developed several strategies for overcoming obstacles to freedom. As daughters, mothers, and wives, they contested oppression and invented solutions that defied their status as enslaved women.

Chapter 1 examines the first, and arguably most important, act of rogue diplomacy in American history: the refusal of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay to heed the Continental Congress's instructions that they make no peace with Britain without first obtaining French consent. The government of Louis XVI had kept the American Revolution afloat through nearly a decade of war, and the French foreign minister - Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes - expected his American allies to follow Paris's lead during peace negotiations, but Adams, Jay, and particularly Franklin executed a briliant end-run around Versailles and concluded a separate treaty with London that gave the infant United States far more generous borders (along with other concessions) than Vergennes or Louis ever would have countenanced. By defying the Congress, and by profiting so immensely thereby, Franklin, Jay, and Adams established a standard of diplomatic insubordination that endures to the present day.