The Life of George Washington

Used throughout the first half of the nineteenth century in schools and colleges, John Marshall’s own abridgment of his monumental five-volume biography of George Washington is now available in a Liberty Fund edition that once again brings the spirit of George Washington alive in America’s classrooms.

Within eight years of the death of George Washington in 1799, John Marshall, who later became Chief Justice of the United States, published his authoritative five-volume biography. Justice Marshall’s biographer, Albert J. Beveridge, describes The Life of George Washington as “the fullest and most trustworthy treatment of that period from the conservative point of view.”

The twentieth and final version of Marshall’s abridgement, published in 1849, is the text reproduced in the Liberty Fund edition of what Charles A. Beard has praised as a “great” and “masterly” biography.

The editors’ foreword and notes, with new maps of major battle campaigns, make this edition especially attractive for classroom use.

Robert Faulkner is Professor of Political Science at Boston College.

Paul Carrese is Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy.

John Marshall is Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (1994).