The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3: Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War: Which Established the Independence of His Country and First: President of the United States

John Marshall wrote this volume as a man who had stood beside Washington in the snow at Valley Forge. A future Chief Justice of the United States, Marshall served as a young officer in the Continental Army, and his biography emerges from direct knowledge rather than research alone. This is how an insider saw the Revolution: not as distant history, but as lived experience. The narrative follows Washington through the desperate New Jersey campaign, the arrival of Lafayette, the tensions with rival generals like Charles Lee, and the long bloody road to Yorktown. Marshall examines not merely battles, but the political warfare that bedeviled the American cause: supply shortages, quarreling congressmen, and the perpetual problem of holding together an army that never had enough of anything except enemies. The portrait of Washington that emerges is neither saint nor myth, but a commander forced to wage war with one hand tied by congress and the other by his own impatient officers. This volume captures the Revolutionary War at its rawest, before hagiography calcified into legend. For readers who want to understand how early Americans understood their own founding, Marshall's account remains indispensable.