Washington

This board holds the pictures gathered for Washington, one of the books in James Lantos's Pictorial America series of illustrated histories. George Washington was the most pictured American of his age, and the image most people carry of him comes from a single unfinished portrait.

He was born in Virginia in 1732 and worked as a young surveyor before serving as an officer in the French and Indian War. In 1775 the Continental Congress made him commander of the Continental Army. He crossed the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776 to win at Trenton, held the army together through the winter at Valley Forge in 1777 and 1778, and accepted the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Then he did something that astonished the world. In 1783 he resigned his command and went home.

He came back to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was inaugurated as the first president in New York in 1789. He served 2 terms and again chose to step down, setting an example that held until 1940. He died at Mount Vernon in December 1799.

Gilbert Stuart painted Washington several times, and one portrait, left unfinished in 1796, became the most copied image of him. It is the face on the one-dollar bill. Other artists, from Charles Willson Peale to the engravers who copied them, spread his likeness into homes, schools and public buildings across the country. After his death, Mount Vernon fell into disrepair until a group of women formed the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association in the 1850s and saved it.

The pictures in this collection include portraits, battle scenes, views of Mount Vernon, and the celebrations held in his honor, such as the centennial of his inauguration in 1889 and the bicentennial of his birth in 1932. Notice how often he is shown on horseback or in uniform. For generations, Americans pictured Washington first as the general who won the war.