But one man both literally and figuratively stands above the fray in each of these productions: George Washington. No one seems to have the ability or desire to crack the code on the tall Virginian. Whatever the scenario, the other men squabble and fight, but Washington stands to the side: quiet, dignified, a bit aloof, and probably dressed in his military uniform. In Hamilton, Miranda acknowledges this lack of color when he has General Washington break the fourth wall to beg the audience’s pardon so that he can “let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second.” He briefly shares his concern that the soldiers he commands want to “put him on a pedestal,” and then he quickly returns to that very stand for nearly the balance of the show. For the most part, however, Washington stands much like a statue as the other Founders swirl about him in a frenzy of activity.

Washington, of course, was no less human, so why have recent popularizers had so much trouble embracing his humanity? First, Washington wanted it that way. For much of his life, he explicitly cultivated quiet distance as a strategy to reinforce his stature in the community, whether as a leader among the colonial Virginia gentry, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, or president of the United States. Protocol and order were paramount for him, and Washington’s central objective in that protocol was to insulate himself, particularly once he was president. His correspondence and papers, though voluminous, reveal little about Washington’s character save for his regular frustration with Congress (and who hasn’t been there?). His writings contain little of the panache and pathos that characterizes the work of others of his generation. Adams fumed in his diary, Franklin sparkled in his anecdotes, Jefferson agonized in his treatises, and Hamilton bristled with passion in his letters. Washington resisted any urge he may have had to display emotion, with rare exceptions.

His fellow Americans embraced the creation of Washington as a distant, godlike figure. Even before his election as president, many Americans saw him as the one true unifying figure in the new nation, already a man apart. By the time of his death in 1799, many saw him as a semi-deity. Within weeks of his passing, Mason Locke Weems set his image in amber and made it infinitely more difficult to engage with the human Washington. A traveling book peddler and minister better known by his title as parson, Weems wrote the enormously popular Life of Washington, which went through several dozen editions in the early 19th century and which shapes our perception of the first president to this day. The best example from Weems’s biography is the story of 6-year-old George admitting that he “can’t tell a lie” when his father asks who chopped down his favorite cherry tree. The story comes entirely from the mind of Weems—sorry if that ruins your day—but nonetheless remains enormously popular as a mark of Washington’s admirable character. Weems was less concerned with historical accuracy (which was not a staple of biographies generally until the 20th century) but instead with using Washington to make his own argument about moral, religious living. When narrating Washington’s death, therefore, Weems described the scene as a spiritual event on par with the resurrection of Jesus. Immediately upon his last breath, Weems recounts, Washington ascended to heaven, where “myriads of mighty angels hastened forth, with golden harps, to welcome the honoured stranger.”