Who Killed George Washington?

(Editor's Note: The Guest Writer for this blog is Dale Mason, author of The Forgotten George Washington Bible.)

These days, everyone’s talking about releasing the files— the shadowy Epstein saga, MLK’s final days, and the truth about JFK’s assassination. But the cover-up that may matter most isn’t about who died in the 20th century. It’s about who’s been erased in the 21st.

George Washington.

Yes, that George Washington—the founding father, general, president, and, in many ways, America’s first superhero. But while his granite face still looks out from Mount Rushmore and his name graces monuments and cities, his real legacy—the truth of the man—is being systematically buried.

A few days ago, five acclaimed PhD scholars were named finalists for the prestigious George Washington Prize, a $50,000 award originally launched to honor bold and engaging non-fiction books about America’s founding era. According to its submission rules, the award was intended for well-sourced, substantial, and intellectually rigorous “new works on George Washington and his times that reach a broad, non-scholarly public audience.” The original winner? Ron Chernow, an amazingly gifted storyteller and self-taught historian—without a PhD after his name.

Fast forward twenty years, and last week’s official announcement from Mount Vernon and its co-sponsoring institutions reads more like a procedural memo. Respectful. Thorough. And utterly uninspiring.

Why? Because academia has drained the lifeblood from Washington’s story. Rather than electrifying a new generation, they’ve turned the humble giant into a dusty museum piece: an irrelevant and offensive object of scorn.

And for the most part, it’s no accident.

How many history teachers have taught their students the fact that Washington used his final will to free every enslaved person he legally could? Or that he was the first recorded “subscriber” to a massive study Bible with an incredibly patriotic illustration that ties Scripture directly to the Constitution. Or that a page from that very Bible was given by the Washington family to a “Yankee schoolteacher” so it could be buried in the cornerstone of the Washington Monument, 21 feet beneath that towering memorial. A silent witness to the faith that built our nation.

How many history teachers can point to the fact that Washington didn’t consider himself a deist—but called himself a Christian.

These and so many other exciting truths are being edited out of the American story. Why? They don’t fit the new narrative. They point to faith, virtue, growth, and personal sacrifice—the kind of legacy that inspires, convicts, and challenges the cultural status quo.

As a father and grandfather, and yes, an amateur historian, I find this deeply disturbing. While trained academics shrink from Washington’s moral complexity, a growing number of us—authors, teachers, filmmakers, pastors, podcasters—are doing everything we can to tell the whole truth. Not to whitewash, but to wake up a generation.

The real tragedy isn’t that George Washington is misunderstood. It’s that he’s being intentionally forgotten—his greatest virtues filtered out, his flaws magnified, and his faith deleted.

So, who killed George Washington?

Not a bullet. Not a disease. But something far more dangerous: cultural amnesia, weaponized by an educational establishment that puts way too much value on academic elitism.

It’s time to reopen the files. Because if the truth about George Washington can be buried… so can the truth about America itself.

Dale Mason is the author of The Forgotten George Washington Bible, endorsed by Mount Vernon’s Research Historian Emeritus, Mary V. Thompson, and various PhD level historians, as well as fellow self-taught US history champions such as Kirk Cameron and others. See GeorgeWashingtonBible.com for more.