Allen's "A Naval History of the American Revolution", 2 vols.

(1913).
CHAPTERS I AND II.
Washington's own writings are necessary to an understanding of his character.

Sparks, "The Life and Writings of George Washington", 2 vols.
(completed 1855), has been superseded by Ford, "The Writings of George Washington", 14 vols.

(completed 1898).

The general reader will probably put aside the older biographies of Washington by Marshall, Irving, and Sparks for more recent "Lives" such as those by Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Paul Leicester Ford.