George Washington by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

First President of the United States (1780-1793; 1793-1797) Born Bridges Creed, Weshtmloreland County, Va., February 22, 1722; died Mt. Vernon, Va., December 14, 1799. The following is excerpted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"And now the house began to prepare for work. The Speaker had named all the standing committees. A great number of private memorial and petitions had been presented. The late members had almost all come straggling in, when one morning after roll-call, Marshall rose in his place and announced to the Speaker that the report which spread through the city the evening before was true. George Washington was dead. The great man had been ailing but a few days. A ride in the wet brought on an inflammation of the windpipe, and a disorder which would now be called Odema. The custom has ever been that each generation of physicians holds its own theory of diseases, and has its own sovereign cure. Bad blood was then considered to be the cause of most maladies, and bleeding a sure cure. This remedy was vigorously applied to Washington, and the patient was speedily bled to death. He died in his sixty-eighth year, and the heyday of his glory and fame. Time has dealt gently with his memory, and he has come down to us as the greatest of all leaders and the most immaculate of men. No other face is so familiar to us. His name is written all over the map of our country. We have made his birthday a national feast. The outlines of his history are known to every school-boy in the land. Yet his true biography is still to be prepared. General George Washington is known to us, and President Washington. But George Washington is an unknown man. When at last he is set before us in his habit as he lived, we shall read less of the cherry-tree and more of the man. Naught surely that is heroic will be omitted, but side by side with what is heroic will appear much that is commonplace. We shall behold the great commander repairing defect with marvelous celerity, healing dissentions of his officers, and calming the passions of mutinous troops. But we shall also hear his oaths, and see him in those terrible outburst of passion to which Mr. Jefferson has alluded, and one of which Mr. Liar has described. We shall see him refusing to be paid for his services by congress, yet exacting from the family of the poor mason the shilling that was his due. We shall see him as the cold and forbidding character with whom no fellow-man ever ventured to live on close and familiar terms. We shall respect and honor him for being, not the greatest of generals, not the wisest of statesmen, not the most saintly of his race, but a man with many human frailties and much common sense, who rose in the fullness of time to be the political deliverer of our country."--JOHN BACH McMASTER (1852-1932), taken from his "A History of the People of the United States (1883)", D. Appleton & Co. Effective published copyright ©Mickey Cox 2002