This book brings together--for the first time--the details of
Washington's 45-year campaign to build and perfect Mount Vernon.
Here we meet the planter/patriot who also loved building, a man
passionately committed to impressing the stamp of his character
and personal beliefs on the physical world around him.
Architecturally, as the authors show, Mount Vernon blends the
orthodox and the innovative in surprising ways, just as the new
American nation would. Equally interesting is the light their
book sheds on the process of building at Mount Vernon, and on
the people--enslaved and free--who did the work. Washington was
a demanding master, and his workers often clashed with him. Yet,
as the Dalzells argue, that experience played a vital role in
shaping his hopes for the future of the nation--hopes that
embraced the full promise of the American Revolution. George
Washington's Mount Vernon thus compellingly combines the two
sides of our first President's life, the public and the private,
and uses this combination t