The Grand Idea : George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West

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Summary: An Overlooked Example of Washington's Vision
Review:
Although George Washington made a geographic miscalculation in thinking the Potomac River would be the "front door" on to "the fertile plains of the Western Country"-he was right (as usual) about his vision of the western-oriented destiny that awaited his countrymen.
In the very lively and interesting The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West, Joel Achenbach, a staff writer for the Washington Post and science columnist for National Geographic, tells the story of Washington's western trip soon after the Revolution. He made this journey in 1784: up the Potomac, across the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio valley country of western Pennsylvania. The rugged 34-day, 680-mile trip by canoe and horseback was made in part to collect rents on Washington's long-neglected western properties. The trip helped to protect Washington's private interests, but it also crystallized his belief that the Potomac was the natural passage to the continental interior. This belief became somewhat of an obsession, not only because of personal motivation, but also because Washington thought the Potomac waterway would bind the 13 new states with the unsettled West through "the cement of interest." That is, a strong commercial connection that would prevent a possible future split due to emerging political differences and foreign influence.
Achenbach's entertaining book has a fluid and almost conversational style, and its story goes beyond the early attempts to commercially navigate the shallow and fickle Potomac by Washington's envisioned system of canals and locks. His later chapters especially blend biography, geography and history, while examining the importance of the Erie Canal, the coming of railroads, the Civil War as well as the Potomac as it is today. In the end, Washington's Potomac waterway never materialized. The river was not the ideal water route to the west, and was simply not navigable under normal circumstances, and certainly not by nineteenth-century standards. Nonetheless, Achenbach's appealing depiction of Washington smoothly tells the story of a restless entrepreneur and practical visionary who understood better than anyone that the future of the Union he helped to create lay in common national interests and energetic western expansion. After all, while Franklin, Jefferson and Adams had traveled to the salons of London and Paris, Washington had gone to the wilderness at the forks of the Ohio.




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Summary: Washington: the missing years
Review: "A cabin with a dirt floor and a pig sleeping in front of the fire was a fine manor needing a little attention."

This is one way that author Joel Achenbach characterizes Geo. Washington's attitude toward the American West. It illustrates the author's ability to turn a felicitous phrase as well as the General's and his compatriots' engineering frame of mind.

The geography of the Potomac River, Washington's plans for it as the sinew that would tie a new nation together, and how those plans did or did not come to fruition are the interconnected themes of this account. For Achenbach, the Potomac is a narrative mainstream with many anecdotal tributaries. The author propels the stories with an undertow of irony and an unwillingness to treat Washington with the usual reverence.

The book begins with, and is dominated by, a chronicle of the general's westward reconnaissance mission in 1784. It was on this trip, generally along the path of the Potomac and often times on the river itself, that Washington began to concretize his plans for establishing such a route as the way trade would be established with the Ohio valley, with both economic and political benefits to follow. The Potomac was not a waterway that allowed for effortless navigation. It would of course require some engineering.

Following that compelling beginning, Achenbach pilots us down the river's story, relating it to Washington's presidency, the establishment of Washington City as the capital, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the modern economic development of the region. Through all these events, the alteration of the river continued. As interestingly as Achenbach formulates each account, none ever seems as well-integrated as that of the 1784 trip.

Along the way, we read with varying interest of Washington's legal battle with settlers on what he considered his western possessions, his fear of being buried alive, and the etymology of "turnpike".

Although not as polemical, you might consider this the Eastern equivalent of "Cadillac Desert" in its recounting of American unwillingness to accept the land as it was found, as long as government could be compelled to subsidize its transformation. To only slightly paraphrase that earlier book: confronted by new land, the first thing Americans want to do is change it.

The later chapters may not match the standard established by the first few. But overall, "Grand Idea" is an absorbing, well-written geographical history.


Rating:
Summary: The Grand Idea -- The Grand Read
Review: "The Grand Idea -- George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West" is a must read for any student of the Founding Fathers, Lewis and Clark, and any native Washingtonian. Revealing anecdotes generally unknown to casual history buffs, "The Grand Idea" is classic Achenbach, filled with entertaining vignettes of the General's life between the end of his tenure as Commander in Chief of the revolutionary forces and his election as the first president of the United States.

Binding the short stories together by focusing on Washington's plans to open the "near West", that area generally thought of today as the Ohio River Valley, Achenbach weaves a thoroughly readible volume, enteraining to the last, and full of his wit and ever-philosophical bent. It seems as if every second or third paragraph ends with yet another analytical barb, moving the reader to seek out the next great line, often accompanied by an out-loud chuckle.

Mixing history, with "story" and analysis is what made this book so much fun to read. A classic example of Achenbach musing is contained in a short diatribe on alcohol and its role in the early western life:

"Alcohol is a recurrent element of frontier writing. The settlers are drunk, the Indians are drunk, ther travelers soon become drunk. Whiskey cost 3 cents a glass. Wagoners would dance to a fiddler, drink all night, and would never repair to their room, since they had no room, only a claim to a few square feet on the barroom floor. They smoked crude cigars that emitted a mephitic stench and were priced at four for a penny. That such twists of tobacco were smoked by drivers of Conestoga wagons gave the cigars their enduring name: Stogies."

Not content to leave the description there, Joel adds, "We can imagine what this world smelled like. But what did it look like?"

Well, Mr. Achenbach proceeds to tell us what it looked like, in grand fashion. Pick it up; read it; and you'll know what George Washington's Potomac looked like.

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Summary: A New Facet of George Washington
Review: Everyone knows about the importance of George Washington in the American Revolution and as the first President. Few people are aware, however, of his "Grand Idea" to connect the Eastern seaboard and the Western territories of colonial America through commercial use of the Potomac River. Perhaps even fewer are conscious of Washington's financial motives in spurring American expansion and the rigors he was willing to undergo to achieve that end.

This book is superbly written, witty, and a pleasure to read. Author Joel Achenbach explains how creation of the United States was not as inevitable as we take for granted today. His description of Washington's personality and conduct in a business context enables the reader to better understand how Washington led and inspired a revolutionary army and guided the establishment of a new government.


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Summary: Engaging history with a strong sense of place
Review: Having just finished Tom Wicker's disappointing Penguin Lives biography of George H.W. Bush, I was a little down on the idea of journalists attempting to write history. But Joel Achenbach, whose work I've enjoyed in The Washington Post for some time, has restored my faith. "The Grand Idea" is both a well-researched work of history and an enjoyable story of a side of The Father of Our Country we seldom see. Americans seem to love books about the founders, and this is one that will repay reading with both entertainment and learning.

Achenbach has taken a relatively obscure episode in George Washington's life -- a trip to his western holdings in 1784 -- and teased out of it (validly, I believe) connections to larger themes surrounding America's growth and development. Washington saw the Potomac not only as a potential commercial artery (and a source of personal profit), but also a means of binding together the relatively settled east with the frontier west. In Washington's mind, the high-minded and national blended with the pecuniary and the personal. Achenbach manages to keep a light tone while dealing not only with the General's statistics-laden and just-the-facts prose, but also with his evasions and even, frankly, hypocrisies.

Once Washington died, some of the momentum went out of the Potomac development schemes. The same is unfortunately true, to a degree, of Achenbach's story. Without the figure of Washington and the narrative of his travels and ideas, the book begins to wander a bit. The unfolding development of the Potomac canal, including the story of the B&O versus C&O rivalry, is interesting but unfocused, while the Civil War on the Potomac -- worthy of books in and of itself -- felt rushed. Having lived for about ten years, off and on, in the D.C. suburbs, I found the discussion of the modern Potomac and its place in the Washington metroplex a fun coda, but I wonder if other readers will respond the same way.

In spite of this slight loosening of the narrative bonds in the latter parts of the book, I still recommend "The Grand Idea" highly. As entertainingly-written history, it should be very accessible to general readers. If you dragged around McCullough's "John Adams," for example, you should definitely reward yourself with some Joel Achenbach. At the same time, it's still a rigorous enough work of history that specialist readers can feel safe in checking it out too. And that's not a bad balance for a book to strike.

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Summary: Mr. Achenbach writes like an angel
Review: I was impressed by the fact that his portrait of George Washington manages to capture the man under the powdered wig without diminishing his stature at all. Recently I've been dipping into the GW letters because of an interest in his involvement in the Braddock and Forbes campaigns, and I must say that the man in those 1750s letters is the same tenacious and fascinating fellow revealed in Achenbach's book. Anyone interested in rivers, geography, cartography, the history of technology, or the spirit of exploration will want to read this book.

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Summary: And A River Runs Through It
Review: In The Grand Idea, Joel Achenbach not only examines Washington's lofty vision of the Potomac River as a major trade route to the west, but introduces the reader to a grand idea of his own: a serious examination of history written in easy, compelling prose. In fact, Achenbach's great gift as a writer is his ability to break down and explain a complicated topic in an interesting and absorbing manner. This nuanced and relatively un-examined period in George Washington's life is an excellent vehicle for such a skill. The reader is drawn along effortlessly with anecdotes and insights and is almost surprised to realize when it's all said and done how much he has learned about George Washington and his vision for the country, life in early America and the origin of the national character.

Running throughout the narrative is the idea that history is by no means inevitable. American destiny was not necessarily destined, but was rather shaped and defined and set into motion by the ideas and plans and schemes of people, both as individuals and as a nation. The serves as more than a history lesson to the modern reader but as a warning and responsibility as our decisions affect the current course of society. Diplomacy may have taken the place of a paddle, but today's leaders are still forced to negotiate tricky trade routes. And the decisions made today will be history tomorrow.

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Summary: A Refreshing Look at George Washington
Review: It is 1784. The war was won. He had retired to pursue farming his "fig tree and vine" life along the banks of the Potomac River.

Yet George Washington's mind could not remain fallow. Watching the lazy tidal waters of the Potomac lap shores of his Mount Vernon plantation, he developed what author Joel Achenbach calls his Potomac Scheme. The retired warrior planned a trip up the Potomac, over the Appalachians and into the frontier. The excuse was to collect back rents on his properties. The objective, however, was to lay the ground work for a plan that would transform the Potomac into a major commercial artery that would link the 13 newly established states with the unsettled West.

There was a method to Washington scheme. Achenbach, who describes himself as an explanatory journalist as opposed to an historian, details Washington's concern that the newly established country would fracture into separate nations. The Potomac, Washington envisioned, could effectively bind the two regions.

The book paints an insightful portrait of Washington. Set between periods of public service, the reader sees a relaxed man, predisposed towards action. A man who loves the outdoors; a man with an unquenchable entrepreneurial drive; a man who believes the country's destiny lays to the west.

Achenbach took three years to research and write this largely uncovered period of Washington's life. He spices his account with descriptions of the land's geography, politics, farmers and backwoodsmen, Indians and slaves.

Thanks to Achenbach well-written "explanatory journalism," Washington emerges as an engaging visionary not the stiff, aloof figure portrayed in history books.

Rating:
Summary: The Illumination Of A Neglected Time
Review: Joel Achenbach has found his genus: History. With an extensive amount of research and effort, he has knitted together an extraordinary saga of American historical development and how it extended from efforts to make the Potomac the route for commerce with the western frontier. In doing so, he has revealed a remarkable episode of George Washington's life from the period between the end of the revolutionary war and the beginning of his presidency of which this reader had been ignorant. The story continues through and after Washington's presidency, narrating the daunted struggle to tame the rowdy and shallow waterway, and while most cities that are centers of human power have evolved over centuries as a result of common human interests, this book details how the capital of the most powerful nation was born in wetlands of the Potomac as a result of the desires of its most famous founding father.

Achenbach's writing style is informal and entertaining without belying the scholarly nature of his subject. His style is a wonderful model for future historians to follow.

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Summary: A River Runs Through It: GW and What America Was To Be
Review: Joel Achenbach's The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West is an elegant fusion of American business history, presidential biography, and geography, told as a good and gripping story. Achenbach does a remarkable thing in this book: he explores an important theme - George Washington's ambitions for what the young republic should become when it grew up -- without the weighty tone of scholarship typical of such treatments. The book has a charming, almost conversational style which reveals the contradictions, ambiguities and tensions in the life of Washington and his peers in their messy humanity and the rough social reality of their contemporary context. Achenbach is a witty, insightful and incredibly competent sherpa through this landscape and history; he never lets his prose eclipse the inherent drama of the story. And he stops the narrative now and then to chat with the reader on the matter at hand, as in this passage on historical interpretation:

.... All of which is a reminder that history is not an exact science and at moments is more like a séance, a desperate attempt, in the mist and fog, to channel the voices of the dead.

The story is fascinating at several levels: the description of the young country as so fractured that any assertion of Federal authority threatened to drive states out of the Union; the tensions between the first President's private and public agendas; the inability of investors and policy makers to know when a new technology (the railroad) had made another (the canal) obsolete. These are all themes that resonate through American history; it is as if Achenbach has discovered their headwaters in this brilliant and highly readable book.

Anyone interested in American history, the presidency, the history of the city of Washington, or economic history will love this book. Buy it and read it!