Washington, George

Washington, George (1732–1799), commander in chief of the Continental army during the American Revolution, first president of the United States.He was born at his father's estate, Wakefield, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the eldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington. Coming from a family of middling rank, he received little formal education, but soon developed a penchant for self‐improvement and an ambition to better himself. During his early youth his greatest influence was his older half brother Lawrence Washington, the master of Mount Vernon, whose marriage into the influential Fairfax family brought him into the first rank of Virginia society. The time young George spent with his brother and his brother's friends fueled his ambition and brought him a coterie of influential friends. By the time he was twenty he had become surveyor for Culpeper County, traveled with his ailing brother to Barbados and, after Lawrence's death in 1752, succeeded not only to his estate at Mount Vernon but to his brother's position as adjutant of the Northern Neck and Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Washington chose the military as his route to advancement, and the encroachment of the French on Virginia's frontiers provided the opportunity. He acted as emissary to the French forces for Governor Robert Dinwiddie in 1753, served as lieutenant colonel of Virginia's military forces during the unsuccessful Fort Necessity campaign in 1754, and as a volunteer aide‐de‐camp with General Edward Braddock's disastrous 1755 campaign against the French at Fort Duquesne. Assuming command of the Virginia Regiment in the fall of 1755, he spent the next four years defending Virginia's western frontier, constructing forts, making military and financial arrangements with the colonial government in Williamsburg, negotiating with England's allies among the Indian tribes, and gaining invaluable experience in command. Eager for promotion, greedy for land, and often critical of his superiors to the point of insubordination, the brash young Washington little resembled the later mature statesman.

Retiring from the regiment in December 1759, he married the wealthy young widow Martha Custis (1731–1802), and established himself as a squire at Mount Vernon. They had no children. Backed by Martha's great personal fortune, he managed his plantation and its slave laborers, served on local vestries and in the House of Burgesses, and acquired substantial land holdings. With other Virginia planters he engaged in land speculation on the Virginia‐North Carolina frontier and in the Ohio Country. He also gradually rectified the character defects he had displayed as a young regimental commander. By the time he was elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774, he had already become a prominent figure in Virginia and a leader in the political activities that would lead to the break with England. Both because of his previous military experience and the delegates' wish to draw Virginia into the war, Congress appointed Washington commander in chief of the American army in June 1775.

Throughout the Revolutionary War he struggled with a lack of supplies, men, support from Congress and state governments, and his own lack of military genius. The Boston siege of 1775–1776 was successful, owing in part to Washington's administrative ability, but in 1776 he faced what was probably the insurmountable challenge of defending New York against British attack. Unable to hold the city, he managed the evacuation adroitly, regrouping his forces at White Plains. While not a master tactician, he occasionally displayed flashes of brilliance. Among his successes were the battles of Trenton and Princeton at the end of the New Jersey campaign, 1776–1777, and his ability to hold his small rag‐tag army together through the Philadelphia campaign and the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge. After the Monmouth campaign, June‐July 1778, Washington's role in military operations took second place to the war in the South until, in the spring and summer of 1781, in collaboration with the French, he embarked on the southern campaign that culminated in the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown. At the end of 1783 he gave up his commission to Congress and returned to Mount Vernon, where he hoped to retire. Instead Mount Vernon became a mecca for Americans honoring the military leader who had become an icon of integrity and patriotism. Swarms of visitors sought Washington's opinion on every conceivable subject. Both at home and abroad he symbolized the new republic. In 1787 he served as president of the Constitutional Convention.

Although he accepted the office with considerable misgivings, George Washington was elected president of the United States in February 1789 and reelected in 1792. In office, Washington used his extraordinary administrative abilities to construct an efficient civil service, and under his leadership, the fiscal policies of Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton brought financial stability to the new nation. Asserting the power of the new federal government, he mobilized and personally led a militia force tax‐resisting frontiersmen during the 1794 against Whiskey Rebellion. In foreign affairs his administration succeeded in maintaining United States neutrality as war erupted between France and England in 1793 and in normalizing diplomatic relations with England by means of Jay's Treaty (1794). A combination of negotiations and military operations brought peace to the country's frontiers. By the end of his second administration his political faith in the new nation was shaken by the growing factional disputes between the Federalist party, which Washington supported, and Democratic Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Always obsessive concerning his reputation, he left office embittered by attacks on his policies. In a precedent‐setting farewell address (September 1796) he deplored the rise of political parties, explained his decision not to seek a third term, and warned against “permanent alliances” with other nations.

Whatever the criticism of his administration, George Washington's contributions to the creation and development of the new republic were indispensable and unparalleled, a fact the American public clearly understood. His place as an American icon was secure. Retiring to Mount Vernon in March 1797, he resumed the life of a Virginia planter, returning to public life briefly as lieutenant general and commander of the army during the Quasi‐War with France in 1798–1799. Washington died at Mount Vernon, 14 December 1799, and was buried on the estate.
See also Adams, John; Colonial Era; Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Revolution and Constitution, Era of; Seven Years' War; Washington's Farewell Address.

Bibliography

James T. Flexner , George Washington, 4 vols., 1965–1972.
W.W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, Philander D. Chase, Beverly H. Runge, eds., The Papers of George Washington, 45 vols. to date, 1982–.
Barry Schwartz , George Washington: The Making of An American Symbol, 1987.
John Ferling , The First of Men: A Life of George Washington, 1988.
Paul K. Longmore , The Invention of George Washington, 1988.
Richard Norton Smith , Patriarch, 1993.

Dorothy Twohig