By any standards, George Washington was a great man and a great president, especially by the kind of diminished standards we have today. Born into what passed for the middle class in plantation Virginia in 1732, Washington was always an ambitious try-hard who made money, glory, and history as naturally as he breathed. Colonial Virginia was not what we would call an upwardly mobile society. With an economy built on
Though his family was hardly rich, Washington inherited one plantation
