I said to myself, 'Is Hamilton saying the father of our country is this moody, irritable boss?'"

"I was really quite startled by that statement," Mr. Chernow remembers, "because it made the ill-humor sound habitual.I said to myself, 'Is Hamilton saying the father of our country is this moody, irritable boss?'"

He was. Washington, in fact, had "a colossal temper." He largely tamed it by the time he became president in April 1789, but on occasion it slipped the leash. In August 1793, for instance, Washington went wild when, in the midst of his attempt to keep America neutral in a war between Great Britain and France, he saw a pro-French newspaper cartoon of him being guillotined like Louis XVI.