George Washington

Biography

George Washington was born in 1732, the eldest of six children of his father’s second marriage. His family were members of the landed elite, and, in the Washington’s case, were owners of several plantations along the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. George lived at home until he was 16 and received only a rudimentary education, focusing his attention on learning surveying. When he was 11 years old, his father died, and George’s half-brother Lawrence became his mentor. Washington hoped to follow Lawrence into the royal navy, but his mother discouraged this ambition. Instead, at age 16, George Washington began his career as a surveyor, joining a surveying party headed to the Shenandoah Valley. Over the next few years, more surveying assignments followed.

In his early 20s, Washington began a military career, first in the Virginia militia and later as an aide to British general Edward Braddock, but he was disappointed and disillusioned by his experiences. He soon resigned his commission and returned to the management of his plantations. He also entered local politics, taking a seat in the House of Burgesses [the province’s lower house or assembly].

Over the next decade he watched as the bonds between Mother Country and colonies began to fray. He supported the early colonial protests, and shared the resentment felt by Americans over the tightening of British trade regulations and Parliament’s eagerness to tax the colonies to support its growing empire. By the time he was called upon to represent Virginia in the First and Second Continental congresses, Washington considered a break with England to be likely.

After the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Congress called on Washington to serve as commander in chief of a Continental Army. He was thus absent from the Second Continental Congress when the Declaration of Independence was signed. For the duration of the war, Washington devoted his energies and time to his military role as the leader of patriot forces. It was not until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 that George Washington again became a civilian and returned to his home at Mount Vernon. He hoped to devote his time to repairing his finances, for he had suffered losses during the war. But the new nation needed him once again.

Although proud to be a Virginian, Washington advocated the creation of a more empowered, truly national government. Like James Madison, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton and other nationalists, he recognized that the Confederation government could not meet the needs of the newly independent country. He hosted a conference at Mount Vernon in 1785 to discuss some of the most pressing national problems, and although he did not attend the Annapolis Convention in 1786, his anxiety about the fate of the country was obvious. In Washington’s view, the faltering and floundering Confederation government was going to make America appear as a “humiliating and contemptible figure…in the annals of mankind.” But when friends and colleagues urged him to attend the convention forming in Philadelphia, he hesitated. Domestic tragedies made him pause: his favorite brother had died suddenly, his mother and sister were ill; his finances were still in disarray; and his own health made the prospect of a journey to Philadelphia unpleasant for he had suffered a severe attack of rheumatism so painful that he was “hardly able to rase my hand to my head, or turn myself in bed.” And lurking in the back of his mind was the potential risk to his reputation if the convention failed to produce a solution to the nation’s political crisis. But Washington also knew that his presence at the convention would lend it the much-needed legitimacy only he could bring. In the end, the pressures and pleadings of his friends and colleagues won him over. As Henry Knox, Washington’s comrade in arms during the revolution, put it, his attendance would doubly entitle Washington to be called “the Father of [his] Country.”

When the convention convened in May of 1787, Washington was chosen as its presiding officer. This meant, he believed, that it would be inappropriate for him to engage in the debates that followed. But Washington’s support for the proposed “energetic government” was obvious and, in 1789, following the constitution’s ratification, Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the United States. Over the next eight years, he masterfully established the authority of the federal government, managed the competing factions within his cabinet, directed a foreign policy based on neutrality in European conflicts, and supported Alexander Hamilton’s financial programs.

Despite the urgings of many that he seek a third term, Washington was adamant in his refusal. In his Farewell Address in 1796 he urged his countrymen to avoid party spirit, to quiet sectional differences, and to avoid entangling alliances that would pull the young republic into the conflicts among other nations. He then returned to Mount Vernon, to his wife Martha, and to a much -desired retirement from politics. He died on December 14 1799 at the age of 67 of what modern physicians diagnosed as “acute epiglottitis,” a life threatening infection that causes the small “lid” that covers the windpipe to swell, blocking the flow of air to the lungs.

Over 400 mourning ceremonies followed the news of Washington’s death. Political leaders, ministers, African Americans and women composed eulogies, and his close friend John Marshall proposed a national day of mourning for Washington on his birthday, February 22. The resolution passed Congress immediately. In his eulogy, Henry Lee declared the former President “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” an epithet that is remembered today.