George Washington
1732-1799
George Washington was commander in chief of the
Continental army during the American Revolution and first president of
the United States (1789-97)
Early Life and Career
Born in Westmoreland County, Va., on Feb. 22, 1732, George Washington
was the eldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary
Ball Washington, who were prosperous Virginia gentry of English descent.
George spent his early years on the family estate on Pope's Creek along
the Potomac River. His early education included the study of such
subjects as mathematics, surveying, the classics, and "rules of
civility." 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, who became something of a
substitute father for his brother, had married into the Fairfax family,
prominent and influential Virginians who helped launch George's career.
An early ambition to go to sea had been effectively discouraged by
George's mother; instead, he turned to surveying, securing (1748) an
appointment to survey Lord Fairfax's lands in the Shenandoah Valley. He
helped lay out the Virginia town of Belhaven (now Alexandria) in 1749
and was appointed surveyor for Culpeper County. George accompanied his
brother to Barbados in an effort to cure Lawrence of tuberculosis, but
Lawrence died in 1752, soon after the brothers returned. George
ultimately inherited the Mount Vernon estate.
By 1753 the growing rivalry between the British and French over
control of the Ohio Valley, soon to erupt into the French and Indian War
(1754-63), created new opportunities for the ambitious young Washington.
He first gained public notice when, as adjutant of one of Virginia's
four military districts, he was dispatched (October 1753) by Gov. Robert
Dinwiddie on a fruitless mission to warn the French commander at Fort Le
Boeuf against further encroachment on territory claimed by Britain.
Washington's diary account of the dangers and difficulties of his
journey, published at Williamsburg on his return, may have helped win
him his ensuing promotion to lieutenant colonel. Although only 22 years
of age and lacking experience, he learned quickly, meeting the problems
of recruitment, supply, and desertions with a combination of brashness
and native ability that earned him the respect of his superiors.
French and Indian War
In April 1754, on his way to establish a post at the Forks of the Ohio
(the current site of Pittsburgh), Washington learned that the French had
already erected a fort there. Warned that the French were advancing, he
quickly threw up fortifications at Great Meadows, Pa., aptly naming the
entrenchment Fort Necessity, and marched to intercept advancing French
troops. In the resulting skirmish the French commander the sieur de
Jumonville was killed and most of his men were captured. Washington
pulled his small force back into Fort Necessity where he was overwhelmed
(July 3) by the French in an all-day battle fought in a drenching rain.
Surrounded by enemy troops, with his food supply almost exhausted and
his dampened ammunition useless, Washington capitulated. Under the terms
of the surrender signed that day, he was permitted to march his troops
back to Williamsburg.
Discouraged by his defeat and angered by discrimination between
British and colonial officers in rank and pay, he resigned his
commission near the end of 1754. The next year, however, he volunteered
to join British General Edward Braddock's expedition against the French.
When Braddock was ambushed by the French and their Indian allies on the
Monongahela River, Washington, although seriously ill, tried to rally
the Virginia troops. Whatever public criticism attended the debacle,
Washington's own military reputation was enhanced, and in 1755, at the
age of 23, he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander in chief
of the Virginia militia, with responsibility for defending the frontier.
In 1758 he took an active part in Gen. John Forbes's successful campaign
against Fort Duquesne. From his correspondence during these years,
Washington can be seen evolving from a brash, vain, and opinionated
young officer, impatient with restraints and given to writing admonitory
letters to his superiors, to a mature soldier with a grasp of
administration and a firm understanding of how to deal effectively with
civil authority.
Virginia Politician
Assured that the Virginia frontier was safe from French attack,
Washington left the army in 1758 and returned to Mount Vernon, directing
his attention toward restoring his neglected estate. He erected new
buildings, refurnished the house, and experimented with new crops. 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,
(Martha Washington, the first First Lady of the United States) a wealthy and attractive young
widow with two small children. It was to be a happy and satisfying
marriage. After 1769, Washington became a leader in Virginia's
opposition to Great Britain's colonial policies. At first he hoped for
reconciliation with Britain, although some British policies had touched
him personally. Discrimination against colonial military officers had
rankled deeply, and British land policies and restrictions on western
expansion after 1763 had seriously hindered his plans for western land
speculation. In addition, he shared the usual planter's dilemma in being
continually in debt to his London agents. As a delegate (1774-75) to the
First and Second Continental
Congress, Washington did not participate
actively in the deliberations, but his presence was undoubtedly a
stabilizing influence. In June 1775 he was Congress's unanimous choice
as commander in chief of the Continental forces.
American Revolution
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, using cannon brought
down from Ticonderoga by Henry Knox, Washington occupied Dorchester
Heights, effectively commanding the city and forcing the British to
evacuate on March 17. He then moved to defend New York City against the
combined land and sea forces of Sir William
Howe. In New York he
committed a military blunder by occupying an untenable position in
Brooklyn, although he saved his army by skillfully retreating from
Manhattan into Westchester County and through New Jersey into
Pennsylvania. 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, N.J.,
a brilliantly conceived attack in which Washington crossed the Delaware
River on Christmas night 1776 and surprised the predominantly Hessian
garrison. Advancing to Princeton, N.J., he routed the British there on
Jan. 3, 1777, but in September and October 1777 he suffered serious
reverses in Pennsylvania--at Brandywine and
Germantown. The major
success of that year--the defeat (October 1777) of the British at Saratoga, N.Y.--had 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 so-called Conway
Cabal--an intrigue by 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, and by spring he was ready to
take the field again. In June 1778 he attacked the British near Monmouth
Courthouse, N.J., on their withdrawal from Philadelphia to New York.
Although American general Charles Lee's lack of enterprise ruined
Washington's plan to strike a major blow at Sir Henry Clinton's army at
Monmouth, the commander in chief's quick action on the field prevented
an American defeat.
In 1780 the main theater of the war shifted to the south. Although
the campaigns in Virginia and the Carolinas were conducted by other
generals, including Nathanael Greene and
Daniel Morgan, 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, in cooperation with the comte de
Rochambeau and the comte d'Estaing, the brilliantly planned and executed
Yorktown Campaign against British Army Leader Lord
Charles Cornwallis, securing (Oct. 19, 1781)
the American victory.
Washington had grown enormously in stature during the war. A man of
unquestioned integrity, he began by accepting the advice of more
experienced officers such as Horatio Gates and
Charles Lee, but he quickly
learned to trust his own judgment. He sometimes railed at Congress for
its failure to supply troops and for the bungling fiscal measures that
frustrated his efforts to secure adequate materiel. Gradually, however,
he developed what was perhaps his greatest strength in a society
suspicious of the military--his ability to deal effectively with civil
authority. Whatever his private opinions, his relations with Congress
and with the state governments were exemplary--despite the fact that his
wartime powers sometimes amounted to dictatorial authority. On the
battlefield Washington relied on a policy of trial and error, eventually
becoming a master of improvisation. Often accused of being overly
cautious, he could be bold when success seemed possible. He learned to
use the short-term militia skillfully and to combine green troops with
veterans to produce an efficient fighting force.
After the war Washington returned to Mount Vernon, which had 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, he added a greenhouse, a mill, an icehouse, and
new land to the estate. He experimented with crop rotation, bred hunting
dogs and horses, investigated the development of Potomac River
navigation, undertook various commercial ventures, and traveled (1784)
west to examine his land holdings near the Ohio River. His diary notes a
steady stream of visitors, native and foreign; Mount Vernon, like its
owner, had already become a national institution.
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. After the new Constitution was
submitted to the states for ratification and became legally operative,
he was unanimously elected president (1789).
The Presidency
Taking office (Apr. 30, 1789) in New York City, 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 (1789) and the South (1791). 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. More
about his Presidency
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 vituperation against the president, as did his vigorous
upholding of the excise law during the Whiskey
Rebellion in western
Pennsylvania.
Retirement and Assessment
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.
He was succeeded by his vice-president, Federalist John
Adams.
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 mid-December, Washington contracted what was probably quinsy
or acute laryngitis; he declined rapidly and died at his estate on Dec.
14, 1799.
Even during his lifetime, Washington loomed large in the national
imagination. His role as a symbol of American virtue was enhanced after
his death by Mason L. Weems, in an edition of whose Life and Memorable
Actions of George Washington (c.1800) first appeared such legends as the
story about the cherry tree. Later biographers of note included
Washington Irving (5 vols., 1855-59) and Woodrow Wilson (1896).
Washington's own works have been published in various editions,
including The Diaries of George Washington, edited by Donald Jackson and
Dorothy Twohig (6 vols., 1976-79), and The Writings of George
Washington, 1745-1799, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick (39 vols.,
1931-44).
George
Washington was the first recipient of the prestigious Congressional Gold
Medal on May 25, 1776
See
George Washington's Gravesite and Headstone at Mount Vernon
The
complete George Washington Papers collection at the Library of Congress
Washington's
Revolutionary War Itinerary
and the Location of His Headquarters, 1775-1783
and
More...
Additional Resources
- The
American President: George Washington - Fact file and
comprehensive biographical sketch based on PBS series. Includes
lesson plans and links.
- Apotheosis
of George Washington - How Washington's image has changed and
been manipulated to make him the ultimate American hero.
"Politically, socially - and of course, commercially -
Washington's image has become an easily-recognized and powerful
tool."
- Encyclopedia
Americana: George Washington - A detailed biography written for
students. Includes Washington's inaugural addresses and a fact file.
- George
Washington - Includes pictures, biographical sketch, first and
second inaugural addresses, and bibliography.
- George
Washington - Student publishing site includes biography,
pictures of Washington's teeth, exceptional letters, portraits and
links.
- George
Washington - Short biography from the official Whitehouse site.
- George
Washington - Biographical article covering both his military and
presidential career.
- George
Washington Art Page - Six paintings showing George in different
stages of presidential and pre-presidential development.
- George
Washington Discussion Port - Forum and live chat devoted to
discussing George Washington's life and leadership.
- George
Washington Papers - Library of Congress site which presents its
collection of 65,000 Washington documents. Each page of these
documents has been photographed and is presented online. Site also
includes a timeline of his lie and a selection of essays.
- George
Washingtons Remarkable Vision - Article published in 1880
which purports to describe a vision of America's future seen by
Washington at Valley Forge.
- Historic
Valley Forge: George Washington - Documents and stories from the
life of the man who led colonial troops through the harsh winter at
Valley Forge.
- History
House: Put it on George's Tab - A brief look at Washington's
extravagant expense account while General of the Continental Army.
- The
Life of George Washington - Online version of a biography
originally published in 1808.
- The
Moland House - "George Washington's headquarters on August
10, 1777, where the Marquis de Lafayette joined the American
Revolution, the American Flag was said to have first flown over
American troops, and several other historic generals joined the
American Revolution"
- Mount Vernon
Estate & Gardens - Well laid out site dedicated to
Washington's home in Virginia. Site includes a visitor guide,
virtual tour and educational resources.
- POTUS:
George Washington - Background information, election results,
cabinet members, and links.
- Resonating
with Washington Crossing the Delaware - Bus driver's experience
tuning in to George Washington in commemoration of the miraculous
turning of the American Revolutionary War in its darkest hour.
- The
Rise and Fall of the Newburgh Conspiracy - "How General
Washington and his spectacles saved the Republic". The
near-mutiny that took place in the army in 1783 and Washington's
role in defusing it.
- Six
Historic Americans: George Washington - Article which sets out
to prove that Washington was not a Christian communicant and not a
believer in the Christian religion.
- Sulgrave
Manor - The ancestral home, in England, of George Washington's
family.
- The
Surprising George Washington - Attempting to find the real man
in the historical record. From Prologue, the quarterly journal of
the National Archives and Records Administration.
- Treasures
from Mount Vernon: George Washington Revealed - Exhibition of
Washington artifacts, some of which can be seen online. Site
includes other resources on Washington and colonial life.
- Washington
Monument - A brief look at the monument and the man it
memorializes.
|
