Washington’s importance has been so beyond question that, as one exhibition here shows, 155 towns and counties, 740 schools and 26 mountains in the United States are named after Washington.
But, James C. Rees, the institution’s executive director, said in an interview here, less is being taught about Washington in schools these days, and fewer visitors to Mount Vernon arrive with an understanding of his achievements. So after long planning and annual consultations with a panel of scholars, the expansion was designed to reaffirm his importance, elucidate his character and dramatize his life.
This is not an easy task: there really is a mystery about Washington in a way there is not with other founding fathers. The historian Joseph J. Ellis said that Benjamin Franklin was wiser, Alexander Hamilton more brilliant, John Adams better read, Thomas Jefferson more intellectually sophisticated and James Madison more politically astute, yet each thought Washington his “unquestioned superior.” Why?
From an excellent review of the extraordinary new exhibits at Mount Vernon.