Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army.

Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787...

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army.

Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787...

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army.

Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787...

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army.

Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787...

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

Volume 2 is concerned largely with Washington's inaugural jouney to New York and his initial activites as president upon his arrival. The documents, with annotations, chronicle the public adulation and the elaborate receptions and public addresses that the new president encountered along his route to the capital. His correspondence with friends and acquaintances at home and abroad concerns a wide range of subjects from politics to agricultural methods. His personal letters confirm his continuing need for money, his continued involvement in the affairs of family members, and his concern...

Volume 3 covers most of the summer of 1789 and focuses primarily on the problems facing the new administration. Because of the president's serious illness during this period, a larger proportion of the documents than usual are letters and papers sent to Washington, including massive reports from the Board of Treasury describing the financial status of the new nation, detailed descriptions of Indian and military affairs from Henry Knox, and a plethora of applications for public office. The letters to Washington come from a cross section of Americans and present a rich resource on such...

Volume 2 documents Washington's emergence as the extraordinarily active leader of the move to open the upper reaches of the Potomac to navigation and to use it to tie the fast-settling West to the seaboard states. Besides documents relating to Washington's presidency of the Potomac River Company and to the routine management of his private affairs, there are letters dealing with such things as the famous Spanish jacks, the plight of both Patrick Henry and Nathanael Greene, histories by Jeremy Belknap and William Gordon, Lafayette's visit, William Byrd's letters, and David Humphreys's...

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

Volume Four spans the critical period between April 1786 and January 1787. Washington spent all of this period at home at Mount Vernon, managing and improving his estate. Yet he remained a keen observer of the national scene, receiving a steady stream of reports on political developments from correspondents all over the new nation.