The Potomac by Frederick Gutheim

“Perhaps it is still too easy to think of Washington as a country gentleman at Mount Vernon, sitting on the terrace of that famous mansion, looking across well-manicured lawns with their deer parks and ha-has to the broad Potomac. This was not the environment that produced Washington the military genius, the political leader, the revolutionist. For the roots of that Washington we must look to the west.
”The French and Indian War gave Washington a perspective of the strategic aspects of warfare on the continental scale. At Winchester he prepared himself to become a great leader of American troops. But most important, during these years he gained a deep understanding of the motives of his fellow countrymen in the west, and through long residence and extensive landholdings he commence to share those interests himself.”

-Frederick Gutheim, 1949