George Washington (389)

George Washington (11 February 1732–14 December 1799) was a surveyor, soldier, statesman, first President of the United States, slaveholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1780. Born on his family’s plantation in Westmoreland, Virginia to a well-established planter dynasty, George Washington’s father died during the junior Washington’s twelfth year, leaving him under the tutelage of older half-brother Lawrence Washington. By then the Washingtons had moved to a property overlooking the Potomac River (1735), which would later become Mount Vernon, and then relocated again, sans Lawrence, to a farm near Fredericksburg (1738). Educated at home by private tutors, young George split his time between his immediate family in Fredericksburg and Lawrence at Mount Vernon. His career began in 1748, when a family connection enabled him to begin surveying in the Shenandoah valley. Thereafter, he studied the profession, gained a surveying license, and by eighteen began purchasing lands to the West. On a trip to Barbados, Washington contracted and survived smallpox while his half-brother and surrogate father Lawrence succumbed to tuberculosis (1751). Not long after, Washington began leasing Mount Vernon from Lawrence’s heirs (1754), before acquiring it fully later down the line. He also took up Lawrence’s command of the local militia (1753).

Virginia tasked Washington with the delivery of letters demanding the French leave the settlement named Ft. Duquesne, later Ft. Pitt (modern-day Pittsburgh)—reiterating Britain’s claim to the occupied land at the confluence of the three great rivers that eventually lead to the Mississippi. It went poorly: Washington’s native guide used the opportunity to strike at the French to achieve his own aims; Washington’s ineptitude allowed a massacre. At the green age of nineteen, Washington accidentally initiated the Seven Years’ War, the first global war.

Desirous of a commission, Washington then served as volunteer staff for the British General Edward Braddock on the expedition to expel the French from Ft. Duquesne. Disaster ensued: most of the large British force was destroyed in an ambush; Braddock suffered a mortal wound; Washington reflected later that perhaps “Providence” had a hand in his fate, for on that day he had horses shot from under him and musket balls passed through his jacket.

Washington did not secure the commission he sought. He resigned in 1758, married a widow with a large inheritance, and won election to the Virginia House of Burgesses. By 1765, he represented all of Fairfax County in the House of Burgesses, where he openly opposed oppressive imperial legislation such as the Stamp Act (1765) and Revenue Act (1767). After such radical activity, the governor dissolved the House of Burgesses, but representatives, including Washington, continued to meet in a local tavern wherein they planned a boycott of British goods which successfully caused the repeal of both acts. When the colonies agreed to hold a Continental Congress in Philadelphia (1774), Washington proved an obvious choice to represent Virginia, given his past of defiance to the Crown.

The following year, the subsequent session of Congress unanimously chose Washington as commander-in-chief to face the British after the recent outbreak of hostilities (1775). He took command outside Boston. William Howe, commander of the British forces, then evacuated that city and took New York instead, which he successfully defended from Washington’s attacks through 1776, backing the new commander-and-chief of the Continental Army into New Jersey and eventually Pennsylvania by the end of that year. The tide turned some when Washington crossed the Delaware and led a surprise-Christmas-Eve ambush on Howe’s winter encampments in Trenton, miraculously capturing the garrison without losing any of his own men. Despite restored confidence in Washington and his efforts, Philadelphia fell to the British the following September (1777), and Howe’s troops spent the winter within the city as Washington and the Continental army faced a brutal winter at Valley Forge. Nevertheless, the American forces emerged stronger than ever in part thanks to formalized training by exiled Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben (APS 1780), whom Washington hoped could instill the discipline the rough-and-tumble amalgamation of militias needed to become a victorious army. The training regimen proved immediately effective at the battle of Monmouth that following June, whereby British forces withdrew from Philadelphia. Morale grew further upon news of Benedict Arnold and General Horatio Gates’s thwarting of British efforts to capture upstate New York at Saratoga (1777). Despite these victories, Gates perhaps attempted to betray Washington and seize his command; in 1780 the British captured Charlestown, and Benedict Arnold switched sides and attempted to deliver his new masters the crucial fort at West Point—but the conspiracy was foiled, and Arnold joined the Redcoats.

Washington warmly welcomed French forces after his colleagues successfully forged an alliance at Versailles (1788). After much back and forth in the northern and southern campaigns, the British moved to concentrate forces in Yorktown, VA, where they believed they would have ample naval protection (1781). Upon the arrival of additional French aid, however, the Franco-American armies forced a British surrender at Yorktown, and the Crown found no other option but to recognize the Independence of the United States. Victory in hand, Washington notably surrendered his command, setting himself apart from millennia of conqueror-kings from whom the fledgling union wanted to distance itself.

Retirement was brief, however, as the events of the 1780s proved the Articles of Confederation were insufficient for binding a nation of colonies. Therefore, Washington joined scores of other notable men of his time in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise them—but quickly set on James Madison’s (APS 1785) plan draft a new Constitution for the states to then ratify. The architects of the subsequent charter envisioned Washington as the head of a much-needed executive branch, and therefore unanimously chose him as such (1789).

As the sculptor of this new role, Washington, ever cognizant of the precedents he would set as the symbol of leadership, toured the new country and made many public appearances (1789-1791). But Alexander Hamilton’s ambitious economic project polarized the government and forced Washington to use a heavier hand. Critics of Hamilton’s plans, including Thomas Jefferson and later James Monroe, lumped Washington in with Hamilton, and accused both of attempting to establish a new monarchy with the centralizing power Hamilton’s central bank and new taxes would create. In reality, the president had no desire to become a monarch and rather little desire to remain president for a second term, but stayed for an additional four years only to try and keep the now-factionalized nation together. The French Revolution only galvanized partisans of both sides (1793), and Washington, now torn between the pro-Britain Federalists and pro-France Republicans, declared neutrality in the conflict. The Republicans accused him of thwarting the Constitution—their faction’s leader (and Washington’s Secretary of State), Jefferson, resigned. Still, Washington pursued continued trade with Britain to supplement Hamilton’s economic project, and the administration sent John Jay across the Atlantic to negotiate a controversial treaty with the crown (1794). The resulting document prioritized trade with Britain over other nations, and Washington, hesitant but fearing French influence within his own government, signed it regardless (1795).

An exhausted Washington declined a third term the following year. He left office with a warning to future administrations against the danger of factionalism, political parties, and over-attachments to and excessive antagonism with foreign nations. Despite the subsequent administrations of Adams and Jefferson seemingly ignoring Washington’s advice altogether, many precedents he set survive to this day. The former president, somehow not entirely drained after years of brutal warfare and two tumultuous terms rife with government infighting and Machiavellian schemes, remained the lead in the project to build the nation’s permanent capital. While president, he chose the District of Columbia’s location out of Maryland and Virginia territories, accepted a design for a city bearing his name featuring a presidential mansion and capital building, appointed commissioners to design, construct, and sell lots within the territory, and laid the cornerstone of the capital (1793).

Still, retirement did not keep him out of government affairs, and Washington backed his former vice president and current President John Adams in his enforcement and defense of the Alien and Sedition Acts (1787), going so far as to help prepare for a war with France. Fortunately, Adams chose to avoid military action and both presidents went forward in supporting a more diplomatic route for the remainder of the conflict. Though the nation averted war, tragedy still loomed on the horizon. In 1799, Washington developed a throat infection to which his doctors responded by bleeding him four separate times and giving him various laxatives. He died shortly thereafter in his home in Mount Vernon. Despite expressing for many decades the intention to free those he enslaved, in his will he only granted those enslaved persons their freedom after the death of his wife. (ANB, DNB)