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 from 1789 until 1797. He symbolized qualities of discipline, aristocratic duty, military orthodoxy, and persistence in adversity that his contemporaries valued as marks of mature political leadership.
Born the eldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife Mary Ball Washington in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on Feb. 22, 1732, George spent his early years on the family estate on Pope's Creek along the Potomac River. Although he 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 his mother. After his father died in 1743, George went to live with his half brother Lawrence Washington 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. Washington's diary account of the dangers and difficulties of his journey helped win him his ensuing promotion to lieutenant colonel. Although only 22 year old and lacking experience, he was ordered to lead a militia force for the protection of workers who were building a fort at the forks of the Ohio River. The French had already ousted the workers and renamed the site Fort Duquesne.
Warned that the French were advancing, Washington quickly threw up fortifications at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania, 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, Washington 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, but 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. As a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775, Washington did not participate actively in the deliberations; however, his presence was undoubtedly a stabilizing influence. In June 1775, when fighting broke out between Massachusetts and the British, he was Congress's unanimous choice as commander in chief of the newly created Continental Army.
Washington took command of the troops surrounding British-occupied Boston on July 3, 1775, 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 moved his makeshift 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. Washington led this brilliantly conceived attack, crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, and surprised the predominantly Hessian garrison. Advancing to Princeton, New Jersey, he routed the British there on 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 discussions among some members of Congress and army officers to replace Washington with Gates, the more successful commander. Washington acted quickly and the plan eventually collapsed due to lack of public support.
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 he secured final American victory with the brilliantly planned and executed Yorktown Campaign against Charles Cornwallis.
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. 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. To promote that end, Washington and other Virginia nationalists were instrumental in bringing about the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 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 of the new United States in 1789.
Standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, 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 Jefferson and 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 mid-December, Washington contracted what was probably quinsy or acute laryngitis; he declined rapidly and died at his estate on Dec. 14, 1799.