When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing—Americans. In the fall of 2018, the author of In the Hurricane's Eye re-created this journey, and along the way he seeks to understand how Americans understand Washington's legacy as a man of the people, a reluctant president, and a plantation owner who held people in slavery.