"The volley fired by a
young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire." -
British statesman Horace Walpole
George
Washington was commander in chief of the Continental army during the
American Revolution and later became the first president of the United States
serving from1789 until 1797.He
symbolized qualities of discipline, aristocratic duty, military orthodoxy and
persistence in adversity that his contemporaries valued as marked of mature
political leadership.
Born
the eldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife Mary Ball Washington,
in Westmoreland County, Va., on Feb. 22, 1732, George spent his early years on
the family estate on Pope's Creek along the Potomac River. Although Washington
had little or no formal schooling, his early notebooks indicate that he read in
geography, military history, agriculture, deportment and composition.He
showed an aptitude for surveying and simple mathematics.An
early ambition to go to sea had been discouraged by George's mother.His
father died in 1743, and soon thereafter George went to live with his half
brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon, Lawrence's plantation on the Potomac. Lawrence
became something of a substitute father for his brother. Upon the death of
Lawrence in 1752, George inherited the Mount Vernon estate.
Washington
played an important role in the struggles preceding the outbreak of the French
and Indian War.He was chosen by
Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to deliver an ultimatum calling
on French forces to cease their encroachment in the Ohio River valley.
By late May in 1754, Washington had reached a large
natural clearing known as the Great Meadows. He made this his base camp. Grass
there could provide food for his animals, and water was readily available.
Soon after he arrived, he received word that a party of French soldiers was
camped in a ravine not far from his position. On the stormy night of May 27th,
1754, Washington and about 40 men began an all night march to confront the
French and learn their intentions. They traveled through woods so dark the men
sometimes spent nearly half and hour just trying to find the trail.
About dawn, Washington met with a friendly Seneca
chief, Half King, and made plans to contact the French Camp. As the French
commander had not posted sentries, Washington and his men easily surrounded
the unsuspecting French.
A shot was fired, no one really knows by whom, and soon the peaceful glen was
filled with the crash of musketry and the sulphurous smell of powder. The
skirmish lasted about 15 minutes. When it was over, 10 Frenchmen were dead and
21 captured. One escaped and made his way back to Fort Duquesne at the forks
of the Ohio. Washington's casualties were one man killed and two or three
wounded. -- National Park
Service at Fort Necessity
"I fortunately escaped without any
wound, for the right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and received all the
enemy's fire, and it was the part where the man was killed, and the rest
wounded. I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me there is something
charming in the sound." -- George Washington
After
the Jumonville Glen Skirmish Washington
quickly threw up fortifications at Great Meadows, Pa., naming the entrenchment
Fort Necessity, and marched to intercept advancing French troops. A successful
French assault obliged him to accept articles of surrender and he departed with
the remnants of his company.
Discouraged
by defeat, Washington resigned his commission in 1754. In May, 1755, he began
service as a volunteer and aide-de-camp to British General Edward Braddock.Braddock
was mortally wounded and Washington narrowly escaped death. He
escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot
from under him.Braddock's troops were
ambushed by a band of French soldiers and their Indian allies on the Monongahela
River. At age of 23, he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander in
chief of the Virginia militia.His
responsibility was to defend the frontier.
Washington
left the army in 1758, assured that the Virginia frontier was safe from French
attack.He returned to Mount Vernon,
to restore his neglected estate.With
the support of an ever-growing circle of influential friends, he entered
politics, serving (1759-74) in Virginia's House of Burgesses. In January 1759 he
married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy and attractive young widow with two
small children.
Alarmed
by the repressive measures of the British crown and Parliament, Washington
became a leader in Virginia's opposition to Great Britain's colonial policies.
At first he hoped for reconciliation with Britain. In July, 1774 he presided
over a meeting in Alexandria that adopted the Fairfax Resolves, calling for the
establishment and enforcement of a stringent boycott on British imports prior to
similar action by the First Continental Congress.As
a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congress 1774 and 1775 Washington
did not participate actively in the deliberations, however, his presence was
undoubtedly a stabilizing influence. In June 1775 he was Congress's unanimous
choice as commander in chief of the newly created Continental Army when fighting
broke out between Massachusetts and the British.
Washington
took command of the troops surrounding British-occupied Boston on July 3,
devoting the next few months to training the undisciplined 14,000 man army and
trying to secure urgently needed powder and other supplies. Early in March 1776,
he took command of the makeshift force and moved his army to New York.Defeated
there by the combined land and sea forces of General William Howe, he withdrew
from Manhattan to establish a new defensive line north of New York City.In
November he retreated across the Hudson River into New Jersey.In
the last months of 1776, desperately short of men and supplies, Washington
almost despaired. He had lost New York City to the British; enlistment was
almost up for a number of the troops, and others were deserting in droves;
civilian morale was falling rapidly; and Congress, faced with the possibility of
a British attack on Philadelphia, had withdrawn from the city.
Colonial
morale was briefly revived by the capture of Trenton, New Jersey, a brilliantly
conceived attack in which Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas
night 1776 and surprised the predominantly Hessian garrison.Advancing
to Princeton, New Jersey, he routed the British thereon January 3, 1777.These
two engagements restored patriot morale and by spring Washington had 8,000 new
recruits.In September and October
1777 he suffered serious reverses in Pennsylvania at Brandywine and Germantown.
The major success of that year, the defeat of the British at Saratoga, New York
in October, belonged not to Washington but to Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates.
The contrast between Washington's record and Gates's brilliant victory was one
factor that led to the some members of Congress and army officers to replace
Washington with a more successful commander, probably Gates. Washington acted
quickly, and the plan eventually collapsed due to lack of public support as well
as to Washington's overall superiority to his rivals.
After
holding his bedraggled and dispirited army together during the difficult winter
at Valley Forge, Washington learned that France had recognized American
independence. With the aid of the Prussian Baron von Steuben and the French
Marquis de Lafayette, he concentrated on turning the army into a viable fighting
force.By spring he was ready
to take the field again.
In
1780 the main theater of the war shifted to the south. Although other generals
conducted the campaigns in Virginia and the Carolinas, Washington was still
responsible for the overall direction of the war. After the arrival of the
French army in 1780 he concentrated on coordinating allied efforts and in 1781
launched the brilliantly planned and executed Yorktown Campaign against Charles
Cornwallis, securing the American victory.
After
the war Washington returned to Mount Vernon, which had once again declined in
his absence. Although he became president of the Society of the Cincinnati, an
organization of former Revolutionary War officers, he avoided involvement in
Virginia politics, preferring to concentrate on restoring Mount Vernon. His
diary notes a steady stream of visitors, native and foreign; Mount Vernon, like
its owner, had already become a national institution.
Shays' Rebellion, an armed
revolt in Massachusetts, 1786 through 1787, convinced many Americans of the need
for a stronger government.Washington
and other Virginia nationalists were instrumental in bringing about the
Constitutional Convention of 1787 to promote that end.In
May 1787, Washington headed the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia and was unanimously elected presiding officer. His
presence lent prestige to the proceedings, and although he made few direct
contributions, he generally supported the advocates of a strong central
government.Washington's attendance
at the Constitutional Convention and his support for ratification of the
Constitution were critically important for its success in the state conventions.After
the new Constitution became legally operative, he was unanimously elected
president in 1789.
Standing
on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, Washington took
his oath of office as the first President of the United States on
April 30, 1789.Washington acted
carefully and deliberately, aware of the need to build an executive structure
that could accommodate future presidents. Hoping to prevent sectionalism from
dividing the new nation, he toured the New England states in 1789 and the South
in 1791.By appointing Alexander
Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State,
he brought the two ablest and most principled figures of the revolutionary
generation into central positions of responsibility.An
able administrator, he nevertheless failed to heal the widening breach between
factions led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Because he supported many of Hamilton's
controversial fiscal policies, the assumption of state debts, the Bank of the
United States, and the excise tax, Washington became the target of attacks by
Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans.
Washington
was reelected president in 1792, and the following year the most divisive crisis
arising out of the personal and political conflicts within his cabinet occurred
over the issue of American neutrality during the war between England and France.
Washington, whose policy of neutrality angered the pro-French Jeffersonians, was
horrified by the excesses of the French Revolution and enraged by the tactics of
Edmond Genet, the French minister in the United States, which amounted to
foreign interference in American politics. Further, with an eye toward
developing closer commercial ties with the British, the president agreed with
the Hamiltonians on the need for peace with Great Britain. His acceptance of the
1794 Jay's Treaty, which settled outstanding differences between the United
States and Britain but which Democratic-Republicans viewed as an abject
surrender to British demands, revived condemnation against the president, as did
his vigorous upholding of the excise law during the Whiskey Rebellion in western
Pennsylvania.
By
March 1797, when Washington left office, the country's financial system was well
established; the Indian threat east of the Mississippi had been largely
eliminated; and Jay's Treaty and Pinckney's Treaty (1795) with Spain had
enlarged U.S. territory and removed serious diplomatic difficulties. In spite of
the animosities and conflicting opinions between Democratic-Republicans and
members of the Hamiltonian Federalist party, the two groups were at least united
in acceptance of the new federal government. Washington refused to run for a
third term and, after a masterly Farewell Address in which he warned the United
States against permanent alliances abroad, he went home to Mount Vernon. His
vice-president, Federalist John Adams, succeeded him.
Although
Washington reluctantly accepted command of the army in 1798 when war with France
seemed imminent, he did not assume an active role. He preferred to spend his
last years in happy retirement at Mount Vernon. In early December, Washington
contracted what was probably quinsy or acute laryngitis; he declined rapidly and
died at his estate on Dec. 14, 1799.
Autograph
letter signed "Go: Washington" to his nephew Robert Lewis, dated from
Mount Vernon, February 12, 1798. Faced with monetary woes after personally
financing the office of President, Washington was forced to sell and/or lease
many of his land investments.This
was his only hope for maintaining and keeping Mount Vernon.The
letter refers to a particular parcel of land in Virginia that contained a
valuable walnut grove.Washington
encouraged his nephew, who handled his financial affairs, to use the walnut
grove as an added incentive to sell or lease the property.Washington
suggested thathis potential
"…tenant is permitted to kill the Walnuts by girdling the trees, I do not
believe that the Crops would sustain much injury by their standing.They
would season in this manner, and a few years hence, when the navigation of the
River is in a more improved state might be brought down with more ease &
safety.Perhaps, upon the whole,
this may be found the mosteligible
plan."
Letter
signed ("G. Washington") as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
to Captain [Samuel] Carr, Head-Quarters [Verplancks Point, New York], 16
September 1782.2 pages, folio, 308
x 195 mm., text in hand of Tench Tilghman (an aide-de-camp), light browning of
paper.
Emphatic
orders from Washington regarding a curious dilemma of considerable importance,
since it involved the crucial alliance with France.Similar
letters were addressed by Washington to Lt. Col. John Popkin and to Capt. Seth
Bannister.The Marquis de Vaudreuil
had arrived at Boston Harbor in August with a fleet of thirteen warships to aid
the American cause, but some French soldiers and sailors had jumped ship and
attempted to join the American forces.Washington
writes:"Complaint having been
made to me by the Marquis de Vaudreuil commanding the Fleet of His Most
Christian Majesty in the Harbor of Boston, that numbers of his Seamen and
Soldiers have deserted, and that he has reason to believe many of them are
engaged in the Continental Service…[M]ake immediate Enquiry among the Recruits
which may be assembled at your Place of Rendezvous, and if you discover any,
either Soldiers or Sailors, belonging to the Service of France, you are to send
them immediately under proper guard to Monsieur de la Tombe Counsul of France at
Boston.And you are in future, on no
Account whatever, to pass any Foreigner, except he can produce full and
satisfactory Proof that he does not belong to the Army or Navy of France."
Unauthorized Site:
This site and its contents are not affiliated, connected,
associated with or authorized by the individual, family,
friends, or trademarked entities utilizing any part or
the subject's entire name. Any official or affiliated
sites that are related to this subject will be hyper
linked below upon submission
and Evisum, Inc. review.