'Where shall we look for Washington, the greatest among men,' asked Parson Weems in 1800, 'but in America'that greatest Continent, which, rising from beneath the frozen pole, stretches far and wide to the south'' Weems, Washington's first biographer, was a propagandist of genius'but even he might not have known quite how American he was being when he wrote that line. A smaller country, it is implied'geographically smaller, and smaller in soul'simply could not have handled the monster-truck greatness of this man. It would have ruptured or burst. For greatness like this, only America would have been big enough. Weems's Washington is famously great all the way through, great from the get-go: an angelic child, fanned by the warm wings of 'ministering spirits,' who matures irreversibly into a mighty warrior and then a world-shaking leader. But what if greatness is something you grow into, patchily and vexedly, under pressure' Young Washington, a new biopic, gives us pre-Revolutionary...
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