By Bob Tedder • To quote author Warren Bingham, his book “George Washington’s 1791 Southern Tour” is an essay not a thesis.” This reviewer will add that it’s an excellently executed one at that.
Bingham, while a student at Mt. Gilead Elementary School, “fell in love with American history.” He parlayed his 1973 West Montgomery High School diploma into a University of North Carolina degree and in the years that followed turned his passion and knowledge of Washington’s Southern tour into an acclaimed lecture series. He has spoken widely at locations ranging from Mt. Gilead’s own Blackmer Lodge 127 to George Washington’s own Mount Vernon. Fortunately, he has now graced the reading public and the halls of historiography with a printed version of his lectures.
One supposes there is a certain difficulty in transposing what has been, is and will continue to be a successful oral presentation into a written one. If this is the case, Bingham successfully hurdles this obstacle. He does so with wit, wisdom and a keen eye for observation. Scattered throughout the book are mischievous, pithy observations tying Washington’s tour with cultural references designed to make an audience chuckle and the reader smile. Examples of Bingham’s bricolage approach to history include “Standing nearly six feet and three inches, he (Washington) was not vanilla” and “(the author) flailed and failed at golf.” This observer’s personal favorite is when Washington’s awkward kiss of a Mrs. John Allen, one of his hardworking tour hostesses, becomes in Mr. Bingham’s words a “buss stop.”
The photographs which accompany the narration are both germane to the text and, as most are accredited to the author’s collection, stand as mute testimony to the peripatetic personality required when compiling a work of this nature. Presented in a format both informative and pleasing, “George Washington’s 1791 Southern Tour” is observational history at its best.
Perhaps on his next trip through the “ole hometown” Bingham will put on his Warren hat, stop by and autograph the copy available at the Paw.