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NOTE ON THIS EDITION

JUST AS THE second edition of his Life of Washington was appearing in 1832, John Marshall wrote to his Philadelphia publishers Cary & Lea: “If I could engage in reducing The Life of Washington to a single volume for schools (I do not know of what size) I would attempt it without any view to profit.” A year later he reported: “I have at length completed an abridgment of the Life of Washington for the use of schools. I have endeavored to compress it as much as possible. . . . After striking out every thing which in my judgment could be properly excluded the volume will contain at least 400 pages.” Cary & Lea did publish the abridgment, but only in 1838, three years after Marshall died.

For this Liberty Fund republication we have eliminated some of the editorial apparatus of the original publisher, but have made no substantive changes to Marshall’s own text. We have kept editorial additions to a minimum. We have changed the subtitle chosen by the publishers in 1838 (“written for the use of schools”) in favor of a more concise indication that Marshall had produced a refined, not merely simplified, version of his larger work. (This single-volume Life was republished in the 1850s without a subtitle.) As to the text itself, a few changes in wording and punctuation have been duly noted. Spelling in general has not been changed, although some proper names have been varied to accord with modern usage; such changes have not been noted.

We have added features to clarify the order and events of the work. In addition to supplying portraits of Washington and Marshall and a new foreword, we divided the work into three parts in a new table of contents. Simple chapter titles have replaced a densely analytical table of contents, partly because the analytical summaries were repeated at the head of each chapter, where we retain them. We also added a list of maps, a list of the principal events of Washington’s life, a listing of further reading and editorial sources (Appendix A), five of Washington’s key speeches and writings, including the Farewell Address (Appendix B), and an index.

The editors’ footnotes are numbered, while Marshall’s few footnotes are marked by asterisks. Notes have been supplied only to clarify technical words, mostly military, or words now obscure, and to supply essential historical and biographical information not likely to be obvious to today’s reader.

While no maps appeared in the first twenty printings of this single-volume Life (1838 to 1849), nor in the edition published from 1857 to 1859, both editions of the full Life published under Marshall’s supervision (1804–7, 1832) included maps of the important battles and campaigns of the Revolutionary War. For this Liberty Fund edition we have supplied new maps for several important battles and campaigns.

We would like to acknowledge the assistance and support provided by Boston College and Middlebury College, specifically Patricia Gray and the Reference staff at Starr Library, Middlebury College, and Richard Saunders and Emmie Donadio of the Middlebury College Museum; the Valley Library and staff at Oregon State University, Corvallis; Thomas Schneider, for help in proofreading; and Charles Hobson, editor of The Papers of John Marshall, for unpublished copies of letters in which Marshall mentions an edition for schools (May 5, 1832 and June 13, 1833).