His journey through Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia in the spring and early summer of 1791 was a bear, taking three months to cover more than 1,800 miles. (Rhode Island, still hesitating to ratify the Constitution, was pointedly excluded he picked up that state in August 1790 after it had seen the light.) In April 1790 he toured Long Island, possibly to thank the members of the Culper Ring, the spies who had kept watch on British-occupied New York during the Revolution protective of his assets, like all good spymasters, he never admitted that this was what he was doing. The crowds that greeted him when he arrived in New York, one congressman wrote, were “thick as ears of corn before the harvest.” In the fall of 1789 he spent a month traveling in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Washington’s election had been unanimous, and his journey through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey was a rolling ovation. ![]() He begins with Washington’s eight-day trip in April 1789 from Mount Vernon to New York City, then the nation’s capital, to be inaugurated. Philbrick’s survey of Washington’s journeys draws on his own knowledge of the period, and on his eye for detail. The book is a hybrid: part history, part travelogue. “Travels With George” is an account of his retracing Washington’s footsteps - and carriage tracks - accompanied by his wife, Melissa, and their Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, Dora. ![]() Nathaniel Philbrick is a prizewinning maritime historian who has recently turned his attention to the founding period. Think of Washington’s trips as test-drives. The United States was relatively new, having won its independence half a dozen years earlier the presidency and the Constitution were brand-new. ![]() TRAVELS WITH GEORGE In Search of Washington and His Legacy By Nathaniel PhilbrickĮarly in his first term as president, George Washington visited every state in the Union.
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