Ken Burns

He's indispensable.

He's also deeply flawed.

He owns hundreds of human beings.

He's rash.

He rides out on the battlefield, risking his life and therefore the cause.

He makes some bad military decisions, but he's able to inspire men in the darkest of night to fight for a cause that nobody had ever fought for before in all of human history.

He is willing to sacrifice, as the last line of the Declaration says, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes.

He may be one of the richest men in America, and he spends most of his time living in other houses and tents for most of the war, never gets back to Mount Vernon.

I think he spends four days during the war at Mount Vernon when it sees named

commander in chief.

He's willing to do that and his sacred honor.

He knows how to pick subordinate talent, unafraid or jealous of the fact they may be better generals than him.

Some are.

He knows how to talk and defer to Congress, which is the important example of a democracy, of a republic.

He's able to convince people from Georgia and New Hampshire that they're not from individual countries as they think they are, but

One thing, Americans, and more than anything else, he gives up power twice.

First his military commission and that.

And he didn't know he was George Washington.

He didn't know there was going to be a dollar bill or a quarter or a big spiky monument in the national capital that's named Washington.

For him, it would be on the other side of the continent, a state named for him, or then every other state has either a county or a town named for him.