Anyone who has the temerity to set out in quest of a true understanding of George Washington undertakes a perilous adventure that requires climbing over hallucinatory mountains and penetrating ghost-ridden forests. When in old age, under attack by enemies who wished to discredit his policies, Washington wrote hopefully, “...by the records of my administration and not the voice of faction I hope to be acquitted or condemned hereafter.” The records voluminously remain, but his hopes have not been realized. Faction is, indeed, only one of many elements that create the cacophony that has down the years drowned out the true greatness of Washington.

Basic to the whole phantasmagoria are two roles that Washington has played in the American psyche: first as the father of our country, and second as human equivalent of the American flag.

Sigmund Freud has described how “infantile fantasies” concerning people’s own fathers can shape their conceptions of historical figures: “They obliterate the individual features of their subject’s physiognomy; they smooth out the traces of his life’s struggles with internal and external resistances; and they tolerate in him no vestiges of human weakness or imperfection. Thus, they present us with what is in fact a cold, strange, ideal figure instead of a human being to whom we might feel ourselves distantly related.” This exactly describes the marble image of Washington, which has been made even more grotesque by the fallacious insertion in its mouth of wooden false teeth.

The confusion of the human Washington with the American flag has altered his image in differing ways. When the people are happy with their nation, as they were during most of the 19th century, Washington is deified. When, as in contemporary times, people are disillusioned, they enjoy suspecting Washington’s integrity, even to the extent of welcoming with enthusiasm the false charge that as commander in chief he anticipated modern crooked business practice by cheating on his expense account. During this down phase many have sought in Washington’s presumed misdeeds justification for their own bad behavior. Mount Vernon was for years plagued by visitors demanding to be shown the field where Washington grew his marijuana crop. Washington, we are told, was known as “the stallion of the Potomac”; no pure woman could without danger be left alone in his presence. The famous English historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee vented his spleen concerning American disobedience during the Revolution by stating that Washington died because of a chill received while on an illicit visit to an adolescent girl in the slave quarters.

More persistent are the legends that were fabricated and widely disseminated during the nineteenth century, when his prestige was so high that zealots of all political and moral persuasions forged Washington’s endorsement for whatever cause they wished to dignify. The reigning genius in this endeavor was Parson Weems, whose Life of George Washington, an expanded Sunday School tract, went through more than eighty editions. Feeling a need to spice