Description

The Two Georges–Mason and Washington were neighbors and friends in Virginia at the northern tidal edge of the Potomac River. For nearly four decades they helped each other run their plantations, establish orchards, retrieve runaway slaves, improve their stock, educate their families, help their neighbors, settle land disputes, speculate in western lands, improve the navigation of the Potomac River, raise children, bury their dead, fight the French and Indians, lead Virginia and America to freedom and independence, and write a federal constitution. Then in a comparative blink of an eye, it all fell apart. Gerard W. Gawalt has for more than forty-five years been a historian specializing in America’s founders and American presidential families.