Of all the monikers applied to Americans from the dawn of the Republic, none resonates as well as the very first, the Father of His Country. … Many [of the Founders] had critical skills that were essential to the success of that national founding, but none had the kind of impact that the “indispensable man” had on so many of the foundational events without which the attempt at independence and nationhood may have been aborted before it could even begin. There were many fathers, but only one Father, and that was George Washington. … Subsequent generations would think of Washington as more myth than man. … In some ways, Washington had moved beyond the realm of man as he modeled his life and decision-making in the mode of the archetypal virtuous republican leader. … George Washington wasn’t only the Father of his Country. In many ways, he was the Father of all this democratic transformation that has occurred since he secured independence for his people across a relatively small strip of land on the eastern coast of the North American continent. This is Washington’s true far-reaching and long-lasting legacy, one whose impact is unequaled in the annals of mankind in the last 2000 years.