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Hall of American Presidents
George Washington
1st president; commander of the Continental Army
- 1732 – 1799
- American Presidents · 1 of 10
Hall of American Presidents
1st president; commander of the Continental Army
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] – December 14, 1799) was a Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire. He is commonly known as the Father of His Country for his role in bringing about American independence.
Born in the Colony of Virginia, Washington became the commander of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763. He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and opposed the oppression of the American colonists by the British Crown. When the American Revolutionary War against the British began in 1775, Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. He directed a poorly organized and equipped force against disciplined British troops.
Washington and his army achieved an early victory at the siege of Boston in March 1776 but were forced to retreat from New York City in November. Washington crossed the Delaware River and won the battles of Trenton in late 1776 and of Princeton in early 1777, then lost the battles of Brandywine and Germantown later that year. He faced criticism of his command, low troop morale, and a lack of provisions for his forces as the war continued. Ultimately Washington led a combined French and American force to a decisive victory over the British at Yorktown in 1781. In the resulting Treaty of Paris in 1783, the British acknowledged the sovereign independence of the United States. Washington then served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which drafted the current Constitution of the United States.
Washington was unanimously elected the first U.S. president by the Electoral College in 1789 and 1792. He established a strong, well-financed national government while remaining impartial in the fierce rivalry that emerged within his cabinet between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. During the French Revolution, he adopted a policy of neutrality while supporting the Jay Treaty with Britain. Washington set enduring precedents for the office of president, including republicanism, a peaceful transfer of power, the use of the title "Mr. President", and the two-term tradition. His 1796 farewell address became a preeminent statement on republicanism: Washington wrote about the importance of national unity and the dangers that regionalism, partisanship, and foreign influence pose to it. As a planter of tobacco and wheat at Mount Vernon, Washington owned many slaves. He began opposing slavery near the end of his life, and provided in his will for the eventual manumission of his slaves.
Washington's image is an icon of American culture and he has been extensively memorialized. His namesakes include the national capital and the State of Washington. In both popular and scholarly polls, he is consistently considered one of the greatest presidents in American history.
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was the first of six children of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. His father was a justice of the peace and a prominent public figure who had four additional children from his first marriage to Jane Butler. Washington was not close to his father and rarely mentioned him in later years; he had a fractious relationship with his mother. Among his siblings, he was particularly close to his older half-brother Lawrence.
The family moved to a plantation on Little Hunting Creek in 1735 before settling at Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1738. When Augustine died in 1743, Washington inherited Ferry Farm and ten slaves; Lawrence inherited Little Hunting Creek and renamed it Mount Vernon. Because of his father's death, Washington did not have the formal education his elder half-brothers had received at Appleby Grammar School in England; he instead attended the Lower Church School in Hartfield. He learned mathematics and land surveying, and became a talented draftsman and mapmaker. By early adulthood, he was writing with what his biographer Ron Chernow described as "considerable force" and "precision". As a teenager, Washington compiled over a hundred rules for social interaction styled The Rules of Civility, copied from an English translation of a French guidebook.
Washington often visited Belvoir, the plantation of William Fairfax, Lawrence's father-in-law, and Mount Vernon. Fairfax became Washington's patron and surrogate father. In 1748, Washington spent a month with a team surveying Fairfax's Shenandoah Valley property. The following year, he received a surveyor's license from the College of William & Mary. Even though Washington had not served the customary apprenticeship, Thomas Fairfax (William's cousin) appointed him surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia. Washington took his oath of office on July 20, 1749, and resigned in 1750. By 1752, he had bought almost 1,500 acres (600 ha) in the Shenandoah Valley and owned 2,315 acres (937 ha).
In 1751, Washington left mainland North America for the first and only time, when he accompanied Lawrence to Barbados, hoping the climate would cure his brother's tuberculosis. Washington contracted smallpox during the trip, which left his face slightly scarred and provided immunity against future infection. Lawrence died in 1752, and Washington leased Mount Vernon from his widow, Ann; he inherited it outright after her death in 1761. The Barbados journey exposed Washington to the wider British Atlantic world and to aspects of plantation society and imperial administration beyond Virginia.
Lawrence Washington's service as adjutant general of the Virginia militia inspired George to seek a militia commission. Virginia's lieutenant governor, Robert Dinwiddie, appointed Washington as a major and commander of one of the four militia districts. The British and French were competing for control of the Ohio River Valley: the British were constructing forts along the river, and the French between the river and Lake Erie.
In October 1753, Dinwiddie appointed Washington as a special envoy to demand the French forces vacate land that was claimed by the British. Washington was also directed to make peace with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and to gather intelligence about the French forces. Washington met with Haudenosaunee leader Tanacharison at Logstown. Washington said that at this meeting Tanacharison named him Conotocaurius. This name, meaning "devourer of villages", had previously been given to his great-grandfather John Washington in the late 17th century by the Susquehannock.
Washington's party reached the Ohio River in November 1753 and was intercepted by a French patrol. The party was escorted to Fort Le Boeuf, where Washington was received in a friendly manner. He delivered the British demand to vacate to the French commander Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, but the French refused to leave. Saint-Pierre gave Washington his official answer after a few days' delay, as well as food and winter clothing for his party's journey back to Virginia. Washington completed the precarious mission in difficult winter conditions, achieving a measure of distinction when his report was published in Virginia and London.
In February 1754, Dinwiddie promoted Washington to lieutenant colonel and second-in-command of the 300-strong Virginia Regiment, with orders to confront the French at the Forks of the Ohio. Washington set out with half the regiment in April and was soon aware that a French force of 1,000 had begun construction of Fort Duquesne there. In May, having established a defensive position at Great Meadows, Washington learned that the French had made camp seven miles (11 km) away; he decided to take the offensive. The French detachment proved to be only about 50 men, so on May 28 Washington commanded an ambush. His small force of Virginians and Indian allies killed the French, including their commander Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, who had been carrying a diplomatic message for the British. The French later found their countrymen dead and scalped, blaming Washington, who had retreated to Fort Necessity.
The rest of the Virginia Regiment joined Washington the following month with news that he had been promoted to the rank of colonel and given command of the full regiment. They were reinforced by an independent company of a hundred South Carolinians led by Captain James Mackay; his royal commission outranked Washington's and a conflict of command ensued. On July 3, 900 French soldiers attacked Fort Necessity, and the ensuing battle ended in Washington's surrender. Washington did not speak French, but signed a surrender document in which he unwittingly took responsibility for "assassinating" Jumonville, later blaming the translator for not properly translating it. The Virginia Regiment was divided and Washington was offered a captaincy in one of the newly formed regiments. He refused, as it would have been a demotion—the British had ordered that "colonials" could not be ranked any higher than captain—and instead resigned his commission. The Jumonville affair became the incident which ignited the French and Indian War.
In 1755, Washington volunteered as an aide to General Edward Braddock, who led a British expedition to expel the French from Fort Duquesne and the Ohio Country. On Washington's recommendation, Braddock split the army into one main column and a smaller "flying column". Washington was suffering from severe dysentery so did not initially travel with the expedition forces. When he rejoined Braddock at Monongahela, still very ill, the French and their Indian allies ambushed the divided army. Two-thirds of the British force became casualties in the ensuing Battle of the Monongahela, and Braddock was killed. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage, Washington rallied the survivors and formed a rear guard, allowing the remnants of the force to retreat. During the engagement, Washington had two horses shot out from under him, and his hat and coat were pierced by bullets. His conduct redeemed his reputation among critics of his command in the Battle of Fort Necessity, but he was not included by the succeeding commander (Colonel Thomas Dunbar) in planning subsequent operations.
The Virginia Regiment was reconstituted in August 1755, and Dinwiddie appointed Washington its commander, again with the rank of colonel. Washington clashed over seniority almost immediately, this time with Captain John Dagworthy, who commanded a detachment of Marylanders at the regiment's headquarters in Fort Cumberland. Washington, impatient for an offensive against Fort Duquesne, was convinced Braddock would have granted him a royal commission and pressed his case in February 1756 with Braddock's successor as Commander-in-Chief, William Shirley, and again in January 1757 with Shirley's successor, Lord Loudoun. Loudoun humiliated Washington, refused him a royal commission, and agreed only to relieve him of the responsibility of manning Fort Cumberland.
In 1758, the Virginia Regiment was assigned to the British Forbes Expedition to capture Fort Duquesne. General John Forbes took Washington's advice on some aspects of the expedition but rejected his opinion on the best route to the fort. Forbes nevertheless made Washington a brevet brigadier general and gave him command of one of the three brigades that was assigned to assault the fort. The French had abandoned the fort and the valley before the assault, however, and Washington only saw a friendly fire incident, which left 14 dead and 26 injured. Frustrated, he resigned his commission soon afterwards and returned to Mount Vernon.
Under Washington, the Virginia Regiment had defended 300 miles (480 km) of frontier against 20 Indian attacks in 10 months. He increased the professionalism of the regiment as it grew from 300 to 1,000 men. Though he failed to realize a royal commission, which made him hostile towards the British, he gained self-confidence, leadership skills, and knowledge of British military tactics. The destructive competition Washington witnessed among colonial politicians fostered his later support of a strong central government.
On January 6, 1759, Washington, at age 26, married Martha Dandridge Custis, the 27-year-old widow of wealthy plantation owner Daniel Parke Custis. Martha was intelligent, gracious, and experienced in managing a planter's estate, and the couple had a happy marriage. They lived at Mount Vernon, where Washington cultivated tobacco and wheat. The marriage gave Washington control over Martha's one-third dower interest in the 18,000-acre (7,300 ha) Custis estate, and he managed the remaining two-thirds for Martha's children. As a result, he became one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, which increased his social standing.
At Washington's urging, Governor Lord Botetourt fulfilled Dinwiddie's 1754 promise to grant land bounties to those who served with volunteer militias during the French and Indian War. In late 1770, Washington inspected the lands in the Ohio and Great Kanawha regions, and he engaged surveyor William Crawford to subdivide it. Crawford allotted 23,200 acres (9,400 ha) to Washington, who told the veterans that their land was unsuitable for farming and agreed to purchase 20,147 acres (8,153 ha), leaving some feeling that they had been duped. He also doubled the size of Mount Vernon to 6,500 acres (2,600 ha) and, by 1775, had more than doubled its slave population to over one hundred.
As a respected military hero and large landowner, Washington held local offices and was elected to the Virginia provincial legislature, representing Frederick County in the Virginia House of Burgesses for seven years beginning in 1758. Early in his legislative career, Washington rarely spoke at or even attended legislative sessions, but was more politically active starting in the 1760s, becoming a prominent critic of Britain's taxation and mercantilist policies towards the American colonies. Washington imported luxury goods from England, paying for them by exporting tobacco. His profligate spending combined with low tobacco prices left him £1,800 in debt by 1764. Washington's complete reliance on London tobacco buyer and merchant Robert Cary also threatened his economic security. Between 1764 and 1766, he sought to diversify his holdings: he changed Mount Vernon's primary cash crop from tobacco to wheat and expanded operations to include flour milling and hemp farming. Washington's stepdaughter Patsy suffered from epileptic attacks, and she died at Mount Vernon in 1773, allowing Washington to use part of the inheritance from her estate to settle his debts.
Text from the Wikipedia article “George Washington”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.