George Washington Biography

Size may not be everything, but George Washington's monument in the capital city named after him simply towers over everyone else's. Several other presidents—Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt—share the honor of memorialization on the National Mall, but none surpass George Washington's in scale or majesty. Washington's great obelisk is still the biggest in DC, and for a time it was even the biggest in the world. It quite literally overshadows the competition. Alexander Hamilton, who was so sure that Washington was the most important, might have been a more likely candidate for indispensability. Hamilton was brilliant—much more so than Washington. Indeed, Washington himself thought so: he had Hamilton draft his political speeches and kept him close by his side throughout his political life. So what was it about GW? How did he come to be the indispensable one?