This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you

from where the West begins in Fort Worth, Texas. Aside from the cherry tree legend, which of course

isn't true, most of us don't know much about George Washington. To many, he's just a man

peering at us from a dollar bill or a figure carved in marble.

What we're about to do is take a look at the flesh and blood man behind the graven image.

Narrating this story is veteran actor James O'Connor,

who starred as Tommy Bones on TV's Gotham and appears regularly on Law and Order.

In this segment, we'll be hearing from Don Higginbotham, author of George Washington,

Uniting a Nation.

Let's take a listen.

The poet Robert Frost once remarked that George Washington was one of the few in the whole

history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Washington could have become king of America if he wanted to.

Instead, America's first general became the United States first two-term civilian president, something

a world familiar only with hereditary monarchs had never seen.

Napoleon, as he lay dying on the island of St. Helena, condemned for having seized

the power of an emperor, complained that his critics wanted me to be another Washington.

Underneath the man who has become namesake to thousands of small towns, high schools, the

nation's capital and the 42nd state, whose image is reproduced endlessly on coins, currency,

and stamps, and a huge bust carved into a South

...